Carleton E. Watkins

Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916) was a pioneering American photographer renowned for his monumental landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley and the American West. His large-format mammoth plate images, taken in the 1860s and beyond, were instrumental in shaping public perception of the American wilderness and contributed to the establishment of Yosemite as a protected national space. Watkins's work is celebrated for its technical mastery and sublime compositional beauty, placing him among the most important figures in the history of photography.