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Preview image of work. albumen print,  Devil's Slide Utah, U.P.R.R. 11001
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1991.111

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Devil's Slide Utah, U.P.R.R.

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Artist

Carleton Emmons Watkins (Oneonta, New York, 11/11/1829 - 6/23/1916)

Title

Devil's Slide Utah, U.P.R.R.

Creation Date

1873-1874

Century

19th century

Dimensions

20 9/16 in. x 15 13/16 in. (52.3 cm. x 40.1 cm.)

Classification

Photographs

Creation Place

North America, United States, Utah

Medium and Support

albumen print

Credit Line

Gift of Isaac Lagnado, Class of 1971, in honor of Professor William D. and Alison Shipman

Copyright

Public Domain

Accession Number

1991.111

The late-nineteenth century West was the age of the railroad and photography. Carleton Watkins combines both in this iconic picture. Drawn west in 1851 by the Gold Rush, he stayed in California, where his scenic photographs helped to build support for Yosemite National Park. Yet Watkins also supported himself by photographing for mining and railway companies. Devil’s Slide Utah, U.P.R.R. captures the ambiguities of Watkins’s dual roles. Two parallel but off-kilter limestone strata in Weber Canyon, Utah, slash downward toward the train, stopped mid-transit with the engineer looking at the camera. The composition forces the eye to wander from train and rock to mountain and sky. Likely made to promote Western railway tourism, this image celebrates the very technologies that made the frontier accessible. It also subtly questions if those technologies they might also be the frontier’s undoing.

Object Description

landscape view with train in foreground, river in middleground, and Devil's Slide in background