Carleton Watkins at the Getty

[domenico Foschi]

Last Monday I went to the opening reception of the new Carleton Watkins exhibit at the Getty Museum...........................................:) .........................................................................:) ............................................., it was great!

If you would like to know more about it and you are in the mood of forgiving me for butchering the English language, you can read my after thoughts in my blog.

http://foschiphotojournal.blogspot.com/

I hope you enjoy.

Domenico

[David Karp]

Thanks Domenico. I will have to check it out.

[Vaughn]

I own a couple of 16x20 (approx) Watkins (been in the family for years). One of them is a view of the Three Brothers...but a vertical. That and one of a two steam locomotive train somewhere in the Sierras (Central Pacific -- has men standing on top of it)) were images I looked at daily growing up in my home.

No wonder I gravitated towards view cameras and contact prints!

Might be down that way over the Thanksgiving Holiday...who knows, might end up heading over to the Getty.

Vaughn

[domenico Foschi]

YEs, David, it is really worth it.
Some of those images really jump at you.

Vaughn, you lucky sod! ( I am british, didn't you know that?)
He's got 2 Carleton Watkins.

I hope you will be able to meet up when me and Hugo and someone else from this forum will gather for something.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I saw the Watkins show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York several years ago. I was tempted to buy the catalogue, but I didn't want the reproductions to cloud my memory of the originals, which are really fantastic.

[David Karp]

I am really looking forward to this. They had a show at Yosemite a few years ago with mammoth plate photos from Watkins, Muybridge (sp?) and others. They also have some Watkins photos in the dining room at the Wawona Hotel. It will be nice to see an even bigger show.

[Vaughn]

Vaughn, you lucky sod! ( I am british, didn't you know that?) He's got 2 Carleton Watkins.

Yes, lucky indeed. I have them on the wall now-- in the original frames...they have hand-forged nails holding them together. I have re-matted them a couple times...unfortuntely they are mounted on non-archival board.

My best guess -- they originally were part of an "album" that were often made way back then (of original prints) and were eventually seperated from the album and sold as seperate prints around the turn of the century.

I'll have them on the wall for another month or so, then will "rest" them for a few years.

Vaughn

[David A. Goldfarb]

Albumen prints were usually starch mounted. Obviously, you would turn them over to a conservator for any kind of remounting, but as long as the paper hasn't become brittle, it's not hard to unmount a starch mounted print. It is probably best to do nothing, but it might be worth consulting with a conservator at the Getty about it.

[domenico Foschi]

Albumen prints were usually starch mounted. Obviously, you would turn them over to a conservator for any kind of remounting, but as long as the paper hasn't become brittle, it's not hard to unmount a starch mounted print. It is probably best to do nothing, but it might be worth consulting with a conservator at the Getty about it.

Once I found 4 prints of the Scottish photographer McPhearson in a Salvation Army store for 2 bucks each, they were beautiful panoramic albumen prints of the Roman countryside and ancient architecture.
Their yellowed mount boards are also completely bonded to the very thin paper.
David, do you know what's the process employed for such a surgical job?
I would think that Albumen prints are especially vulnerable not just because they are thin but also for the albumen.

[David A. Goldfarb]

All such information can be found at albumen.stanford.edu. Look particularly at Reilly's book, which deals with conservation issues and can be downloaded there.

Albumen prints are almost always on thin paper, because thin paper is easier to coat using the float method, which was fairly standard, and they are almost always mounted, because they curl more than gelatin prints. Because albumen expands and contracts more than gelatin with changes in humidity, all albumen prints eventually develop emulsion cracks.

Starch mounted prints can be unmounted by steaming or dampening the print with a sponge or floating in a tray of distilled water, but only if the paper is supple enough not to fall apart when removed from the substrate. I suspect there are more delicate ways of handling fragile prints, like slow humidification, but I haven't had to look into that myself.

[Vaughn]

Albumen prints were usually starch mounted. Obviously, you would turn them over to a conservator for any kind of remounting, but as long as the paper hasn't become brittle, it's not hard to unmount a starch mounted print. It is probably best to do nothing, but it might be worth consulting with a conservator at the Getty about it.

I agree that it is probably better to do nothing. One frame (the train photo) had a crack in the glass for several decades, causing some discoloration in the smoggy air of Los Angeles. Amazingly enough, the discoloration is gone after 30 years of being behind a whole piece of glass. The paper is slightly wavey where the crack was.

I want to re-mat them (it has been perhaps 20+ years since I did it last. I want to use a warmer mat board (8-ply, antique white) and replace the piece of buffered board I put on the back (behind the original acid board) -- just to improve the general pH of the package.

Vaughn

[Struan Gray]

For those who like albumen prints and trains I can recommend this exhibition in Kansas City:

http://www.nelson-atkins.org/art/Exhibitions/AgeSteam/index.cfm

It had a couple of Watkins' photos (at least, it did when I saw the same show in Liverpool this summer), but also several other early albumen prints, and a lot of vintage photography prints in general, from Alexander Gardner to Winston Link and Bill Brandt. Watkins' photographs really stood out, but more for their modernist aesthetic than from any innate technical superiority.

Also fascinating to me were the photo-realistic watercolours and ink wash drawings from the early days of rail. The market for albums of prints was established by these sorts of illustrations, and the link between them and early 'exotic' photography like Watkins, Muybridge and the rest is clear, but it seems, rarely commented on.

[Vaughn]

Interesting -- just looked thru the Getty online cataloge and they have the image of the train that I have...

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=107725

What is interesting is that the Getty photo is 8 x12 inches in size, mine is about 16x20 -- and the Getty image is just a cropped down version of the one I have...Mine has almost the entire front locomotive and lots more sky and of the valley on the right. Both are from the same negative (same people in the same positions, etc.)

But now I know where in the Sierras the photo was taken.

The other photo I have is similar to this...

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=62029

But mine is taken as a vertical and the camera was set up right on the river bank -- not so high up as the Getty image...the tall tree on the right(but right on the edge of the photo) is identical to the one in my copy.)

Vaughn

[David Karp]

I saw the Watkins exhibit at the Getty yesterday. It was outstanding. Very enjoyable and worthwhile. I think it closes next month. If you are in town it is worth seeing.

Watkins's still life of his mining tools was particularly attractive.

The exhibit includes a mammoth plate camera, a plate holder, and a printing frame.

A side benefit of the above was to remind me of how small my 4x5 and WP cameras are!

[Drew Wiley]

The last time I checked, buffered mounts and mats are NOT recommended for albumen
prints. Nonbuffered museum board is the way to go. I have a number of old albumen
prints which have done quite well on their original mounts, which are slightly acidic.

[Eric Brody]

There are a huge number of Carleton Watkins mammoth camera prints currently at the Portland (Oregon) Art Museum in a magnificent show called "Wild Beauty" images of the Columbia River Gorge from 1867 through 1957. Sadly, Terry Toedtemeier, our wonderful photography curator, who put the show together, passed away in early December. The show is up through January 11, and it should be seen by anyone who loves the gorge and western landscape photography.

Eric