Mirror Lake, Yosemite
ca. 1872, printed ca. 1876
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Carole and Irwin Lainoff, Ruth P. Lasser and Joseph R. Lasser, Mr. and Mrs. John T. Marvin, Martin E. and Joan Messinger, Richard L. Yett and Sheri and Paul Siegel, 1986
Accession Number
1986.1189.37
Tags
About this artwork
This albumen silver print represents Carleton E. Watkins at the height of his powers as one of America's most important nineteenth-century photographers. Created around 1872 and printed circa 1876, this view captures Mirror Lake's pristine beauty in Yosemite Valley, where the surrounding peaks create perfect reflections on the water's still surface. Watkins pioneered the use of mammoth-plate wet collodion glass negatives in landscape photography, producing images of unprecedented scale and clari...
About the Artist
Carleton E. Watkins · 1829–1916
Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916), one of America's pioneering landscape photographers, was born on November 11, 1829, in Oneonta, New York, the eldest of eight children to carpenter John Watkins and innkeeper Julia. Drawn by the Gold Rush, he arrived in San Francisco in 1851 at age 22 alongside childhood friend Collis Huntington, who later became a railroad tycoon. Initially working as a carpenter ...