Carleton Watkins
He was perhaps America’s greatest 19th century landscape photographer yet today he’s largely unknown. His breathtaking landscapes of the Yosemite Valley were instrumental in preserving the valley for future generations and paving the way for both the National Parks system and the environmental movement.
Among the people who had Watkins’ prints was a U.S. Senator from California, John Conness. He showed them to his fellow lawmakers as part of his effort to save Yosemite from the development and tourism that was already encroaching on the valley. When President Abraham Lincoln saw them, it helped convince him to sign a bill in 1864 declaring Yosemite Valley “inviolable.”
It was the beginning of America’s environmental movement and the National Parks system. And if not for Watkins, there might not have been a pristine Yosemite Valley for photographers like Ansel Adams to photograph.
Ansel Adams
Though 50 years of work preceded him, Ansel Adams is the spiritual father of American landscape photography. Not only is he perhaps the most recognizable name in all of photography, but his work transcended art and science to make him an icon of popular culture as well.
“It’s rare to find a landscape photographer,” says Carr Clifton, “or any photographer who hasn’t been touched by Ansel Adams’ black-and-white work of the exquisite landscapes of the American West.”
Like Carton Watkins (above) before him, Adams made many famous photographs of Yosemite National Park. What set him apart was his work’s timeless quality. Technologically innovative and advanced enough to surpass much of the printing done today, Adams’ photography was simple enough to maintain a direct connection to the earliest pioneers of the medium.