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Carleton E. Watkins
"Camera man" [Selfportrait of Carleton Eugene Watkins]
1880 (ca, album)
Albumen print
The 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop
LL/123885
Three of these portraits show a remarkable “Camera Man” costume made of scores of photograph portraits and a hat in the shape of a camera.
Leading Watkins authority Weston Naef writes that he “can be identified as Watkins through the same type of analysis that leads to the ‘Shunshine’ identification [another photograph believed to depict Watkins]. The bony facial structure and lean physique match what we know of Watkins’s appearance, but more relevant to an association with Watkins are the implications of his imaginative costume, which consists of a hat in the form of a pretend camera and a suit with its every square inch covered with mounted photographs, the majority of them being portraits. The costume was created for a special occasion but there is no clue in the album what was being celebrated” (Naef, Chasing Aurora: The Secret Life of Carleton Watkins). As only two other somewhat indistinct portraits of the photographer are known to survive, these are the most important extant photographs of Watkins, the greatest of the early Western photographers.
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