| |
Carleton E. Watkins
Devil's Canyon, Geysers, Looking Down
1868-1870
Albumen silver print, from glass negative
39.8 x 52.4 cm. (15 11/16 x 20 5/8 in.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rogers Fund, 1989, Accession Number: 1989.1082
LL/105776
This tortured landscape shows Devil's Canyon, which is cited in William Bentley's Hand-Book of the Pacific Coast (1884) as a "favored resort for pleasure seekers" from nearby San Francisco. Located in Sonoma County, its chief feature was a crevasse six feet in diameter known as the "Steam Pipe," a Dantean inferno from which steam bellowed forth with a blast that often exceeded the scream of a locomotive whistle. The tiny figure on the left, a surrogate for the viewer, is rare in Watkins' work and is thought to be the photographer himself.
| |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint