?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
CARLETON E. WATKINS (1829-1916) Group of 9 photographs from the Los Angeles Plain Coast Survey, which resulted in the first overall map of California. Cyanotype (one), 8 1/4x11 3/4 inches (21x29.8 cm.), and albumen (8) prints, 7x9 1/2 inches (17.8x24.1 cm.), a few with later (contemporary) notations, in pencil, on verso; each is unmounted. 1889
On Wagon, "Studebaker" Group portrait of surveyors Survey camp with American flag and tree Tent encampment with American flag (variant) Survey camp with multiple figures and tents Survey camp with a child in middle ground Survey camp with women Plains with tents in background Encampment.
From the George Davidson Collection, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California; purchased at Sotheby's Photographs auction April 6, 1993; to a Private Collector.
Watkins participated in a survey of the Los Angeles Basin with geologist George Davidson. This early rephotographic or topographic project prefigures pictures by Lewis Baltz. According to the Getty, "This was the largest continuous plain open to the sea in all of the U.S. The project was intended to map the area by establishing a base line from which triangulations could be extended."
