Carleton Watkins

Carleton Watkins, Carleton Eugene Watkins actually ( born November 11, 1829 in Oneonta, New York, † June 23, 1916 in Napa, California ) was an American photographer.

Life

Attracted by the gold rush in California came Watkins in 1851 to San Francisco. He traveled together with the entrepreneur Collis P. Huntington, who later became majority owner of the Central Pacific Railroad was. As an amateur Watkins loved since his youth in photography, he got professional interest only through his work in a daguerreotype studio in San Francisco. From 1861 he was also self- employed as a photographer.

After initial attempts landscape photography Watkins was great passion and remained so until his death. He experimented, inter alia, with the stereoscopy and it is recorded that his pictures from Yosemite Valley to Congress convinced her to set up the Yosemite National Park. Together with the painter William Keith (1838-1911) traveled to Watkins the wild west and was - by his own admission - one last time to photograph America's past.

1879 Watkins married in San Francisco its employees Sneade Frances (* 1857) and had two children with her.

In addition to landscape photography, the railroad was a big issue for Watkins and worked here, among other things Alfred A. Hart (1816-1908) often together. In his years of life, his eyesight was getting worse, his last great series of pictures showed the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906.

In 1910 he was admitted to the Napa State Hospital, where he died six years later at the age of about 86 years.