Photographing Nature’s Cathedrals: Carleton E. Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and H. H. Bennett
Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts
Photographing Nature’s Cathedrals presents American landscape photographs by three nineteenth-century artists who used mammoth plate prints, panoramas, and stereographs—the cutting-edge photographic technology of their time—to capture the natural wonders of the country. The photographs on view helped create the myth of the Edenic American West, attracted tourists to the unusual formations in the Driftless region of Wisconsin, and inspired the creation of Yosemite National Park.
This exhibition is part of the Museum’s season exploring technology and innovation and features the work of photographers Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829–1916), Eadweard Muybridge (American, b. England, 1830–1904), and Henry Hamilton Bennett (American, b. Canada, 1843–1908).
- Eadweard Muybridge, Piwyack. Valley of the Yosemite, 1872. Courtesy of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries
- Eadweard Muybridge, Falls of the Yosemite, 1872. Courtesy of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries.
- Carleton E. Watkins, Yosemite Valley from the “Best General View”, 1866. Courtesy of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries
- Carleton E. Watkins, The Half Dome from Glacier Pt., Yosemite, 1865–1866. Courtesy of the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries