A Remarkable Exhibit
To my friends living in the Los Angeles area, I heartily recommend the Carleton Watkins photography exhibit at the Getty On the Hill. There's a description, as well as a slide show, here:
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/dialogue_giants/
Neither give you any sense of the scope of this exhibit. It's laid out in about ten rooms, with each devoted to a particular theme, rather than moving in chronological order. There are also viewers that allow to you to see the stereographic images in 3-D, as intended, not to mention Watkins' actual camera - a beast of a thing that's about the size of a VW bug on a tripod. (The thought of hauling this to the top of Yosemite, along with all the chemicals, plates, and mobile darkroom needed to take pictures is intimidating, to say the least.)
One room is dedicated to panoramic shots of San Francisco that he took in the 1850s and '60s. The friend with whom I saw the exhibit lived in San Francisco for four years, so she could explain exactly what we were seeing. The detail in these shots is remarkable - you can read "San Francisco Chronicle" on one tiny building, and "Gymnasium" on another. In the Nob Hill district, it was unexpected to discover that the Queen Anne mansions were cheek-to-jowl with shacks and plain, wood-slat apartments. And, among the many wonders to behold, there was the unobstructed view over the acres of two-story buildings to the harbor, which was lined with three-masted sailing ships. There is also an added poignance in the knowledge that virtually every building in all ten frames of the panaroma would have been lost in the great fire that followed the 1906 earthquake. This room alone was easily worth the $10 for parking. (The museum itself is free.)
Other rooms focused on shots from the Los Angeles area in the 1880s (things have changed, to put it mildly), the Columbia River in Washington and various mills in Oregon, and, of course, Yosemite. Watkins was the first to photograph Yosemite, and his shots are still the definitive views. I can't imagine what the impact must have been on the city-bound folk in the East Coast and Midwest when they first saw these images. It must have been akin to our reaction to the first shots of the Earth from space back in the 1960s.
Along with Watkins' eye for composition, and light and shadow, and his scrupulous avoidance of cheap sentimentality, what impressed me was the scope of his work. I'd known his Yosemite shots for as long as I can remember, even before I knew who took them, but I'd assumed without any real basis to do so that he was a one-trick pony - an astonishing trick, to be sure, but I figured once he'd done that, what else could he do? In fact, though, his work in each region was exceptional, and would make him very deserving of a serious retrospective such as this one, even if he'd never set foot in Yosemite. (In fact, two still lifes - one of a crate of cling peaches, the other of seaweed - were among my favorites. Both were clear precursors of Edward Weston, and left me wishing there'd been sufficient financial reward to have allowed Watkins to devote more time to small-scale studies like these. Working on commission made this impossible, though, I'm sure.)
So see this while you can, fellow Angelenos. Watkins is one of the handful of people who gave us our sense of how we see the West; don't miss this chance to experience how great and far-ranging his achievements were.
Also, if you don't mind spending a little coin, make an evening of it and dine at the Getty restaurant. Swell grub. Plus, stopping for dinner and then making a dessert of the excellent room devoted to Monet, Renoir, Van Gough, and Pissaro allowed me for the first and only time to close a museum. Which also meant that I slept until 11:30 Sunday morning and never got off the couch or out of my pajamas the whole day. I would categorize these as collateral benefits.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/dialogue_giants/
Neither give you any sense of the scope of this exhibit. It's laid out in about ten rooms, with each devoted to a particular theme, rather than moving in chronological order. There are also viewers that allow to you to see the stereographic images in 3-D, as intended, not to mention Watkins' actual camera - a beast of a thing that's about the size of a VW bug on a tripod. (The thought of hauling this to the top of Yosemite, along with all the chemicals, plates, and mobile darkroom needed to take pictures is intimidating, to say the least.)
One room is dedicated to panoramic shots of San Francisco that he took in the 1850s and '60s. The friend with whom I saw the exhibit lived in San Francisco for four years, so she could explain exactly what we were seeing. The detail in these shots is remarkable - you can read "San Francisco Chronicle" on one tiny building, and "Gymnasium" on another. In the Nob Hill district, it was unexpected to discover that the Queen Anne mansions were cheek-to-jowl with shacks and plain, wood-slat apartments. And, among the many wonders to behold, there was the unobstructed view over the acres of two-story buildings to the harbor, which was lined with three-masted sailing ships. There is also an added poignance in the knowledge that virtually every building in all ten frames of the panaroma would have been lost in the great fire that followed the 1906 earthquake. This room alone was easily worth the $10 for parking. (The museum itself is free.)
Other rooms focused on shots from the Los Angeles area in the 1880s (things have changed, to put it mildly), the Columbia River in Washington and various mills in Oregon, and, of course, Yosemite. Watkins was the first to photograph Yosemite, and his shots are still the definitive views. I can't imagine what the impact must have been on the city-bound folk in the East Coast and Midwest when they first saw these images. It must have been akin to our reaction to the first shots of the Earth from space back in the 1960s.
Along with Watkins' eye for composition, and light and shadow, and his scrupulous avoidance of cheap sentimentality, what impressed me was the scope of his work. I'd known his Yosemite shots for as long as I can remember, even before I knew who took them, but I'd assumed without any real basis to do so that he was a one-trick pony - an astonishing trick, to be sure, but I figured once he'd done that, what else could he do? In fact, though, his work in each region was exceptional, and would make him very deserving of a serious retrospective such as this one, even if he'd never set foot in Yosemite. (In fact, two still lifes - one of a crate of cling peaches, the other of seaweed - were among my favorites. Both were clear precursors of Edward Weston, and left me wishing there'd been sufficient financial reward to have allowed Watkins to devote more time to small-scale studies like these. Working on commission made this impossible, though, I'm sure.)
So see this while you can, fellow Angelenos. Watkins is one of the handful of people who gave us our sense of how we see the West; don't miss this chance to experience how great and far-ranging his achievements were.
Also, if you don't mind spending a little coin, make an evening of it and dine at the Getty restaurant. Swell grub. Plus, stopping for dinner and then making a dessert of the excellent room devoted to Monet, Renoir, Van Gough, and Pissaro allowed me for the first and only time to close a museum. Which also meant that I slept until 11:30 Sunday morning and never got off the couch or out of my pajamas the whole day. I would categorize these as collateral benefits.