From: Richard Knoppow (dickburk@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 02/19/00-10:18:35 AM Z
The following announcement is copied from this mornings AP news wire.
FEBRUARY 19, 01:29 EST
Photographer's Work To Be Displayed
By CARL HARTMAN Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — People in the 1800s might have lacked today's television,
but they could see a moving view of San Francisco and the Bay Area without
leaving the parlor, thanks to the work of a pioneer landscape photographer.
An exhibit at the National Gallery of Art covers the work of photographer
Carleton Watkins. His images, seen in a special viewing cabinet, could
create an effect similar to a scene being panned by a TV camera.
The show, ``Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception,'' opens Sunday.
Watkins' big images of Western scenery impressed Col. John C. Fremont, the
first presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1856. His wife,
Jessie, sent the photos to her father, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, in Washington.
The photos were popular and strengthened a movement that led President
Lincoln — the second Republican nominee — to sign a law protecting Yosemite
from commercial exploitation.
Watkins' stereoscope cards could be inserted into a kind of photo Rolodex
and then placed in a cabinet of dark, polished wood about two feet high.
Gazing through a pair of lenses built into the cabinet and turning a knob
on the side, a person could see a moving view of the city and the Bay Area
— almost as if they were being panned by a TV camera.
``Despite the level of technology today, we could not improve on what
Watkins produced,'' said Earl A. Powell III, director of the gallery. ``We
couldn't even make what Watkins produced.''
Watkins' heavy, specially built camera had two lenses placed an inch or so
apart. They gave him two slightly different images on the same plate.
The viewer, looking through similar lenses built into the cabinet, gets a
three-dimensional image. Turning the knob brings successive views before
the lenses of the cabinet, giving the effect of motion.
The gallery has four antique viewers on exhibit, as well as large prints of
Watkins' exceptionally precise photos of the western United States nearly
150 years ago.
The cabinets, available as early as the 1850s, were an ornament and
conversation piece in affluent Victorian living rooms. At one time families
had 18 different models to choose from. They cost as much as $23, according
to Sarah Greenough, the gallery's curator of photos. That would have been
equivalent to several hundred of today's dollars.
Hand-held viewers were much cheaper.
The antique cabinets in the exhibit are shown behind glass, so the knobs
can't be turned and only one image can be seen at a time. Visitors can also
get some of the 3-D images on six interactive computer terminals installed
at the end of the show.
Watkins used an awkward but effective process. In remote scenic places he
covered glass plates that weighed as much as four pounds with wet, gummy
collodion, exposed them in a camera three feet long, carried them back to a
portable dark room and developed them — all within half or three quarters
of an hour. He had to be quick to act before the collodion dried out and
ruined the shot. But the process produced extremely precise images.
Watkins also did prints as big as 18 by 22 inches, which he sold in
portfolios.
His photos sold well, but he was a poor businessman and lost much of his
work in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. He died a decade
later in the Napa State Asylum for the Insane and was buried in an unmarked
grave on the grounds.
———
``Carleton Watkins - The Art of Perception'' will be at the National
Gallery of Art through May 27. Admission is free.
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---- Richard Knoppow Los Angeles,Ca. dickburk@ix.netcom.com
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