Upper Yosemite Falls from the Eagle Point Trail, c.1878-81

Little-known until the 1983 Watkins exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum, 'New Series' mammoth-plate prints are rare and signal a shift in his approach to the Yosemite landscape. Martha Sandweiss, the Museum's photographs curator at the time, remarks, 'Of all the photographs [in the exhibition], none so leads to a revision of our notion of the dynamics of Watkins's career and aesthetic growth as the newly recognized Yosemite views made in the years 1878 to 1881...During the 1860s, Yosemite's monumental forms seemed to impose a structure upon his compositions; by 1881, Watkins is vigorously subjugating these forms to his own aesthetic.' (Palmquist, Carleton Watkins: Photographer of the American West, Amon Carter Museum, 1983, p.xv)