The Mining Photographs of Carleton Watkins, 1858-1891, and the Origins of Corporate Photography

This dissertation explores Carleton Watkins's mining photographs, their corporate origins, and the key role they played in establishing a visual vocabulary to describe the growing industrialization and modernization of the nineteenth-century American West. Although most remembered for his photographs of Yosemite, Watkins was also the pre-eminent photographer of extractive landscapes for gold, silver, and copper mining. Mining was the engine that drove nineteenth century Western development, yet few studies of mining photography exist. This dissertation is a close study of Watkins's seven major mining commissions from late 1858, when California mining began to incorporate, to 1891, the zenith of large-scale corporate mining. Watkins photographed for these early mining corporations, making him the first successful corporate photographer in America. His newly developed industrial visual language contributed to the development of a Western landscape aesthetic. Watkins privileged transformation over stasis, economic development over preservation, and clarity over ambiguity. In this way he not only set a standard for artists, but he simultaneously accommodated the businessmen and mine operators intent on promoting the industry. Drawing on a methodology that combines archival research with close readings of the photographs themselves, the chapters proceed chronologically. Chapter One begins in the courtroom, where Watkins positioned himself as a newly-minted 'expert' at providing photographic evidence in mining disputes (Guadalupe mine) and learned an invaluable lesson about the rhetorical function of photographs. Chapter Two examines two commissions (Mariposa and New Almaden) from the 1860s, taken for investment and legal purposes. These images focused on the harmony between mines and the land, a visual strategy that appealed to both his patrons and the larger tourist culture. Chapter Three moves into the 1870s, a 'bonanza' age for hydraulic and silver mining (North Bloomfield and Comstock). These photographs celebrated the growing ascendance of technological and capitalist might. Chapter Four investigates Watkins's commissions of the late 1880s and early 1890s (Anaconda, Golden Gate and Golden Feather mines), when the ascendance of technology and capitalism was complete. His photographs actively reinforced and praised industry with almost purely technological mining landscapes that confirmed his role as the pre-eminent mining photographer of the era.