"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018—The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2018 California Book Awards Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union’s disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio’s horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins’s work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins’s pictures, Congress would pass legislation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical “national park,” the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth’s landmark 1948 “Yosemite: The Story of an Idea.” Watkins’s photographs helped shape America’s idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins’s clients, customers, and friends were a veritable “who’s who” of America’s Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Frémont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today’s America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn’t just reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling of Watkins’s story will fascinate anyone interested in American history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.

This is an opulently illustrated catalogue of the entire remaining mammoth photographs of Carleton Watkins (1829-1916). The work will contribute not only to a fuller understanding of this pioneering photographer but also portray the barely explored frontier in its final moments of pristine beauty.

Issued in connection with an exhibition held Apr. 24-Aug. 17, 2014, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California.

The astonishing scenery of Yosemite National Park is known throughout the world, primarily for the soaring granite outcroppings and graceful waterfalls around Yosemite Valley. But this park is much larger than just the valley. Relatively few visitors get to experience Yosemite's vast expanses, whether south to Wawona and Fish Camp or east to White Wolf and Tuolumne Meadows. Indeed, it was John Muir's efforts to protect the meadows and hills around the valley that ultimately led to the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1890. The state park, which had been established in 1863 and consisted of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, was added to the federal park in 1913.

"Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception examines the signal achievement of this photographic innovator in the context of burgeoning western development and new ways of experiencing the world visually."--BOOK JACKET.

This edited work offers a different view of Yosemite's visual history by presenting 200 works of art together with essays that explore the intersections between art and nature. Integrating the work of Native people, this work provides an inclusive view of the artists who helped create an icon of the American wilderness.

This collection of beautiful black and white photography brings an authentic Yosemite experience to the viewer and shows a wide breadth of activites in the park. Paired with the photographs are diverse and personal memories, stories, and interviews from people with a deep connection to the park. Readers will enjoy this historic book that combines photography with compelling narrative, bringing the beauty of Yosemite to life in a unique way.

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology “A panoramic vision of cultural change” —The New York Times Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Orwell's Roses explores what it was about California in the late 19th-century that enabled it to become such a center of technological and cultural innovation The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society.

Works of the nineteenth century photographer who focused mainly on landscape photos, and Yosemite was a favorite subject of his. His photos of the valley significantly influenced the United States Congress' decision to preserve it as a National Park.