Davoncastle Butte, Sierra Nevada
1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1868
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Davoncastle Butte, Sierra Nevada is a 1868 by Carleton E. Watkins, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This photo shows a huge, rugged mountain called Davoncastle Butte. It stands tall in the Sierra Nevada range. A rocky slope drops down to a flat valley below. Tiny trees dot the mountainside. Watkins took this photo in the 1860s. He used big glass-plate negatives. These made prints that were way larger than today’s photos. People could see every crack in the rocks. His big prints changed how we view nature. If you like this, check out Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829–1916).
From the medium’s beginnings in the 1830s through the 1880s, most photographs were intimately scaled objects meant for the hand, the album, and the home. As the medium began being used to document landscapes and monuments in the 1850s, larger scale processes arose such as the glass-plate negative. The mammoth print truly seemed gargantuan in the 1860s. For much of the 20th century, the 8-x-10-inch gelatin silver print was the norm for photojournalism; these prints were destined for reproduction in books and magazines around the same scale.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916) was an American artist.
See the richer artist page
