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# Carleton Watkins and Photography’s Romance with the American West
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/carleton-watkins-and-photographys-romance-with-the-american-west/
- Published: 2018-11-09T19:06:20.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:09:26.000Z
- Description: How do you tell the story of an artist whose archive was destroyed? Tyler Green’s new book focuses on a major figure in the early history of photography.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Podcast, Carleton Watkins, Tyler Green, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/11/fig_25_yovalleybestgeneral-1460.jpg)

Carleton Watkins, “Yosemite Valley, California” (1865–1866) (image courtesy the Getty Museum)

Tyler Green may be best known as the journalist and art writer behind the [Modern Art Notes](https://manpodcast.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) podcast, but for the last six years, he’s also been working on a major book about a photographer who helped establish the sublime visual record of the American West for viewers around the world.

In his new book, [*Carleton Watkins: Making the West American*](https://www.amazon.com/Carleton-Watkins-Making-West-American/dp/0520287983/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com), Green writes a very readable story about a figure who blended art and science, helped establish photography as an art, and whose images helped galvanize a citizenry that would eventually establish a national park system around the country. Green managed all of this despite being faced with a researchers nightmare: Watkins’s archive was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.

Then there’s the twist, as Green discusses a very personal connection to Watkins that he discovered in the midst of his research. It’s a fascinating tale that shows us history is often more present than we know.

A special thanks to [Mark Pritchard](http://warp.net/artists/mark-pritchard/?ref=hyperallergic.com) of Warp Records for providing the music for this episode.

This, and more in the [current episode](https://simplecast.com/s/a0a3c526?ref=hyperallergic.com) of our weekly [Art Movements](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/art-movements-podcast/) podcast.

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