Like many of the UK photographers I’ve been enjoying recently, Sewell’s work exhibits a wonderful sense of place. The photographs are not so much a record of the views within the park as they are a look at the park and how it exists within the world. The views are an important element of the work, of course, but equally important are the signals of use that are found in the images.

The Heath will be released as a book in the near future, you can learn more and find out how to pre-order a special edition here.

Andy Sewell, from The Heath

Andy Sewell, from The Heath

Andy Sewell, from The Heath

Andy Sewell, from The Heath

Andy Sewell, from The Heath

Composite from collected images tagged with “half dome” on Flickr.

One of my better mistakes.

Ice cone, Montmorency Falls, QC, 1876
Alexander Henderson, Salted Print

More information about this image at the Musée McCord

I spent a lot of time on this beach over the winter. It wasn’t until June that I discovered that it was clothing optional!

There’s something about walking along the highway that has always appealed to me. In this case, the Shore Parkway actually has a very nice bike path that goes through some beautiful scenery. Every once in a while, I’ll come across a path that leads deep into the undergrowth. Sometimes it leads into a field of poison ivy and briars, and sometimes it’s just a dead end. Every once in a while, though, one will open up into one of these secret places and it feels like a wonderland.

I found a short overview of Watkins’ life and work in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, but the jpegs are unsatisfactory in telling his story. Smithsonian Magazine recently published a brief but good article about Watkins, which led me to search of the Library of Congress image archive. All of this research simply fed my desire to see more.

The Cliff House and Environs, Stereographic View, By Carleton Watkins

Portage Railroad at the Dalles Looking West, by Carleton Watkins

Geyser Canyon, California, by Carleton Watkins

Devil Canyon, California, by Carleton Watkins

Many of Watkins’ most impressive photographs were taken with a custom 18×22 inch camera on huge wet plate collodion glass negatives. Watkins traveled extensively along the West Coast, taking some of the first photographs of the Yosemite Valley along the way. The logistics of working with such a camera in those formidable conditions is mind-boggling today. Unfortunately, thousands of his negatives were broken in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which makes his surviving prints are all the more scarce and important.

His original prints were produced in albumen and silver, and as I said before, the jpegs and reproductions I had seen in books did not do them justice. I set out to find some high-quality reproductions and came across Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception at the local library. The book was produced to accompany a major exhibition of Watkins’ work in 1999. I cannot recommend this book highly enough: not only is the selection of photographs comprehensive and extremely well printed, but Douglas R. Nickel’s accompanying essay is an insightful and enjoyable read into Watkins’ place in the history of art and photography.

Some of my favorite pieces in The Art of Perception are the panoramic views. These triptychs are reproduced as gatefolds, and the result is quite striking. I have considered buying a second copy of the book just so I can cut them out and frame them, but that feels somehow sacrilegious to me. The book is out of print, but there are still a few used copies to be found.

Since discovering Watkins’ work I have also become interested in the writings of John Muir, who used Watkins’ photos to illustrate his argument for preserving the Yosemite Valley, ultimately resulting in the legislation that created our National Park system. I also recently came across a short book on the subject by Frederick Law Olmstead, and bought it for a dollar. Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report, 1865 was written around the time Watkins was working in Yosemite and was suppressed by the California legislature for being too controversial, not to be rediscovered until the 1950s. It is now clear that the report was groundbreaking and it is unfortunate that it took so long to come to light. Imagine my surprise when I looked the book up on Amazon after getting home and found that it is actually quite rare and usually sells for $60 or more!

One of my favorite Watkins triptychs is part of the current Into the Sunset exhibition at MoMA. Seeing these three photographs together in person completely blew me away, and was worth the price of admission alone.

View from the Sentinel Dome, Yosemite, by Carleton Watkins

The show is overwhelming and exhilarating, with some excellent landscape work by Stephen Shore, Richard Misrach, Robert Adams, and Joel Sternfeld, among many others. The photographs are arranged to play off of each other, and are enhanced by the juxtapositions of old and new. But no matter how many times I circled the gallery, I kept coming back to that Watkins triptych. It is truly inspiring work.