Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point 1865 - 1866

Carleton Watkins made this albumen print of Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point sometime in the 19th century. Now, photography, like any other medium, is a material process. Watkins would have coated a glass plate with a solution of egg white and chemicals, then exposed it in a large format camera. Think of the labor involved: transporting all that equipment, preparing the chemicals, and then printing the image onto paper. The resulting albumen print has a distinctive sepia tone and a smooth surface, and yields an incredible amount of detail. But more than that, the photograph is a document of a specific place and time. Watkins’s photographs helped to popularize Yosemite Valley, leading to its designation as a national park. This was both a progressive act of preservation and an assertion of ownership over land that had long been inhabited by indigenous peoples. So, in the end, even a seemingly straightforward landscape photograph is tied to wider social issues of labor, politics, and consumption. It’s all there if you look closely.