Carleton Watkins and Thomas Struth at the Metropolitan Museum

I had a chance to spend a few hours at the Metropolitan Museum while staying in NYC over the weekend, among other things was able to see two shows of LF interest that are running currently.

The Carleton Watkins show features a generous selection of mammoth plate prints of Yosemite from his 1861 and 1865-66 series, on loan from the collection of the Stanford University Libraries:

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions...rleton-watkins

The Thomas Struth show is a once-over-lightly survey of his career, with representative examples of the various phases of his work:

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions.../thomas-struth

Both shows are on the whole quite viewer-friendly, with lighting sufficient to see everything clearly and good access to inspect details closely.

What amazed me about the show at Stanford was how carefully Watkins studied Ansel's shots and reproduced a similar views.

Good show. Was at the cantor Art Museum a little bit ago. Here's the thread: http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ghlight=cantor

--Darin

Watkin's prints are really amazing - bigger than 16x20" contact prints on albumen hand coated paper - wow! Mammoth Plate is such an amazing format. I wouldn't want to try that format unless I could afford the format and someone to carry the equipment. Watkins used mules. As much as Adams re-took a number of Watkins locations/ images. I did read that Adams was responsible for bringing Watkins name and work back into familiarity. Sadly Watkins life was hard and rather tragic at the end.