RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 River Glass
JF Boom: A Journal of California
FD University of California Press
SP 42
OP 51
DO 10.1525/boom.2015.5.2.42
VO 5
IS 2
A1 Klingle, Matthew
YR 2015
UL http://boom.ucpress.edu/content/5/2/42.abstract
AB This essay by historian Matthew Klingle compares the work of Carleton Watkins, a pioneer in early photography, and Michael Kolster, a contemporary photographer. Like his predecessor, Kolster uses the wet-plate photographic process to create ambrotypes: handmade images made on glass. Watkins’s images, made in the late-nineteenth century, helped to sell scenic, monumental California and the West to the nation. In contrast, Kolster’s photographs of the Los Angeles River, a degraded and often ignored urban waterway, suggest how older photographic techniques might be employed to create new aesthetics of place freed from the confines of purity and beauty.