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Lot Essay
Lorsque Carleton E. Watkins entreprend son premier voyage dans la vallée du Yosemite en 1861, il réalise une série d’images qui comptent parmi les photographies les plus importantes de l’histoire américaine. Transportant son imposante chambre photographique et ses négatifs sur verre à travers un territoire encore difficile d’accès, il révèle au public de la côte Est la monumentalité spectaculaire des paysages californiens. Ses vues du Yosemite contribueront non seulement à sa renommée, mais également à la naissance d’une conscience patrimoniale qui conduira quelques années plus tard à la protection du site. Cathedral Rock appartient à cette première campagne photographique. Watkins y représente l’une des formations rocheuses les plus emblématiques de la vallée, dont les pics de granit s’élèvent abruptement au-dessus de la végétation. Les premiers visiteurs du Yosemite associaient souvent ces paysages grandioses aux monuments de l’Antiquité ou de l’architecture religieuse européenne. Le nom même de « Cathedral Rock » renvoie à cette lecture romantique du paysage, la masse rocheuse évoquant les élévations d’une cathédrale gothique.
À une époque où les photographes européens parcourent l’Égypte, la Grèce ou l’Italie à la recherche des vestiges du passé, Watkins démontre que le Nouveau Monde possède lui aussi ses monuments naturels.
When Carleton E. Watkins undertook his first journey into the Yosemite Valley in 1861, he produced a series of images that rank among the most important photographs in American history. Carrying his cumbersome camera and glass-plate negatives across a region that was still difficult to access, he revealed to audiences on the East Coast the spectacular grandeur of California’s landscapes. His views of Yosemite would contribute not only to his own fame but also to the emergence of a conservationist awareness that would lead, a few years later, to the protection of the site. Cathedral Rock belongs to this first photographic campaign. In it, Watkins depicts one of the valley’s most iconic rock formations, whose granite peaks rise abruptly above the surrounding vegetation. Early visitors to Yosemite often associated these majestic landscapes with the monuments of antiquity or with European religious architecture. The very name “Cathedral Rock” reflects this Romantic reading of the landscape, the rock mass evoking the soaring forms of a Gothic cathedral.
At a time when European photographers were traveling through Egypt, Greece, and Italy in search of the vestiges of the past, Watkins demonstrated that the New World, too, possessed its own natural monuments.
À une époque où les photographes européens parcourent l’Égypte, la Grèce ou l’Italie à la recherche des vestiges du passé, Watkins démontre que le Nouveau Monde possède lui aussi ses monuments naturels.
When Carleton E. Watkins undertook his first journey into the Yosemite Valley in 1861, he produced a series of images that rank among the most important photographs in American history. Carrying his cumbersome camera and glass-plate negatives across a region that was still difficult to access, he revealed to audiences on the East Coast the spectacular grandeur of California’s landscapes. His views of Yosemite would contribute not only to his own fame but also to the emergence of a conservationist awareness that would lead, a few years later, to the protection of the site. Cathedral Rock belongs to this first photographic campaign. In it, Watkins depicts one of the valley’s most iconic rock formations, whose granite peaks rise abruptly above the surrounding vegetation. Early visitors to Yosemite often associated these majestic landscapes with the monuments of antiquity or with European religious architecture. The very name “Cathedral Rock” reflects this Romantic reading of the landscape, the rock mass evoking the soaring forms of a Gothic cathedral.
At a time when European photographers were traveling through Egypt, Greece, and Italy in search of the vestiges of the past, Watkins demonstrated that the New World, too, possessed its own natural monuments.