photolit.scharden.com (charles Leander Weed references)
Charles
Leander Weed (1824-1903)
In
1864 Lawrence & Houseworth
published three series of stereographs from Weed's
inventory of negatives. The series were titled Sacramento
During the Great Flood of 1862, Silver Region, N.T.
(Nevada Territory), and A Trip to Washoe. Weed is also
thought to have photographed a group of approximately
900 views published as California and Nevada Views.
In 1867 Lawrence & Houseworth exhibited
26 of Weed's mammoth plate views of Yosemite and the
Big Trees at the Paris International Exposition. Weed's
relationship with Lawrence & Houseworth continued
until 1872.
Photographers
Who Worked for Lawrence & Houseworth
and their Holdings in the Prints & Photographs
Division
no image holdings
Born
in New York state, Charles Leander Weed moved to Sacramento,
where he became a camera operator in the
daguerreotype portrait studio of George J. Watson in
1854. Four years later he was named the junior partner
of Robert Vance, the leading daguerreotypist in California
during the 1850s.
Weed
is recognized for his early views of Yosemite. In June
1859 he was the first known photographer to venture
into the valley taken there by the publisher, developer,
and entrepreneur James Hutchings, who printed woodcuts
after Weed's wet plate photographs later that year
in his Hutchings' California Magazine.
Like
other photographers, Weed switched from daguerreotypes
to the wet collodion technique soon after its local
introduction at the 1855
California State Fair. His views of early mining and
settlement in California have been much admired.In
1860 Weed left his partnership to make the first of
several visits to Asia, briefly establishing a studio
in Hong Kong before returning to California the following
year.
He
photographed Yosemite in 1864, then traveled to produce
views of Hawaii in 1865 and of the Far East
in 1867. That same year he showed his photographs
at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, winning an international
award for landscape photography. Weed made another
trip
to Yosemite in 1872, probably with Eadweard Muybridge,
and later worked as a photoengraver. T.W.F.
ref: Cleveland Museum of Art
Weed, who moved west to Sacramento, California, in 1854,
made his first photographs of the Yosemite region in
1859. His mammoth-plate views of the valley, however,
were not made until 1865, possibly with Eadweard Muybridge
working as his assistant. Employed by Lawrence and Houseworth,
a photographic publishing firm, Weed produced views for
a growing audience of tourists who had been exploring
the Yosemite Valley since the mid-1850s.
Weed's photograph of
Mirror Lake is, in fact, two landscapes: the sharp silhouette
of mountain and tree line and a dreamier rendering of
this subject reflected in the water. The sharp line of
a dead tree branch defines the difference between "real" and "reflection." Both,
however, convey the nineteenth-century reverence
for sublime beauty.
ref: Smithsonian American
Art Museum
Charles Leander Weed (1824 - 1905)
American photographer, often active in other countries.
In 1859, Weed undertook the first photographic excursion
into the Yosemite Valley in California, discovered
only briefly before, and contributed to its rapidly
increasing popularity as a "miracle of nature" with
his landscape photographs and stereoscopic images.
Further photographic campaigns are recorded from the
years 1864 and 1873.
reference: web site
Lawrence & Houseworth - and Weed
Capitalizing on the growing market for
stereographs, in 1863 Lawrence & Houseworth decided
to publish views under their name and made a concerted
effort to acquire more photographs. They advertised their
desire to purchase stereoscopic negatives of the Pacific
Coast. Photographer Charles Leander Weed provided the
company with three series of negatives: Sacramento during
the Great Flood of 1862; Silver Region, Nevada Territory;
and A Trip to Washoe. At this time, Lawrence & Houseworth
also hired Weed to make photographs of Yosemite Valley,
the trade routes east of Sacramento, and Native Americans
in the Sierra foothills.
reference: Lawrence & Houseworth web
site
ref:
quaritch
The American photographer, Charles Leander Weed, is
credited as having taken the first photographs at Yosemite,
California and is known for these and for street scenes
and architectural studies made in Sacramento, San Francisco
and other Californian towns. These were published in
the small, popular, stereocard format, which, with the
use of a special viewer, allowed the picture to be seen
in 3-D. He is most admired for his exceptional large-format
landscape photographs.
Weed travelled abroad, leaving America for Hong Kong
for the first time in 1860. There, he worked briefly
in partnership as Weed & Howard, the company that
was also to employ M. Miller. ‘Weed’s remarkable
journey to establish a photographic gallery in Hong Kong
in 1860 was only one in a string of noteworthy photographic
achievements garnered by this unheralded man.’ (Palmquist, ‘California’s
Peripatetic Photographer, Charles Leander Weed’,
in California History: The Magazine of the California
Historical Society, Vol. 58, Fall 1979, No. 3, p. 196).
He returned to Hong Kong again in 1866, this time opening
a studio with his brother and staying at least until
1867 (Palmquist, p. 215). In 1867 he also showed his
photographs at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, winning
an international award for landscape photography.
The Chinese art historian Edwin K. Lai has identified
the location of this photograph as a view towards East
Point (Causeway Bay) taken from Morrison Hill, with offices
and houses built by Jardine, Matheson & Co. visible
in the central area. The mountains in the background
are Fortress Hill and North Point, prior to their development.
The eastern part of the Kowloon peninsula can be seen
in the distance. He has also dated the photograph to
Weed’s second visit to Hong Kong, from the buildings
seen in the view, including the sugar refinery with its
chimney, which was built in 1866.
images
Charles L. Weed
Born: 1824, New York, New York
Died: 1903, Oakland, California
Also Known as: Charles Leander Weed
Also Active in: Sacramento, California; Hong Kong, China;
Hawaii
Works in the collection by this artist
Return to your artist list
Conduct a new artist search
Biography
Weed, who moved west to Sacramento, California, in 1854,
made his first photographs of the Yosemite region in
1859. His mammoth-plate views of the valley however,
were not made until 1865, possibly with Eadweard Muybridge
working as his assistant. Employed by Lawrence and Houseworth,
a photographic publishing firm, Weed produced views for
a growing audience of tourists who had been exploring
the Yosemite Valley since the mid-1850s.
Weed's photograph of Mirror Lake, is, in fact, two landscapes:
the sharp silhouette of mountain and tree line and a
dreamier rendering of this subject reflected in the water.
[Mirror Lake and Reflections …, SAAM, 1994.89.5]
The sharp line of a dead tree branch defines the difference
between "real" and "reflection." Both,
however, convey the ninenteenth-century reverence for
sublime beauty.
Merry A. Foresta. American Photographs: The First Century
(Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with
the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996).
reference; smithsonian
extract from piece on Mark Twain
and on photographer; Stagenwald
from American Heritage magazine: MARK TWAIN IN PARADISE
.... they form a major part of his first book, Roughing
It, published six years after his return to the mainland.
By that time he had delivered a humorous lecture on Hawaii—sometimes
billed as “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands”—before
packed houses from San Francisco to Keokuk to Manhattan.
Most of the selections on the following pages are from
Roughing It. The pictures that accompany them were made
by two of the first cameramen to photograph the islands.
Both, like Clemens, had done their first important work
in California. Hugo Stangenwald came to Hawaii in 1853
and became the island’s most prestigious daguerreotypist:
he was the first to learn precisely how to cope with
the startling clarity of Hawaiian light, and he roamed
the islands making portraits and landscapes, eventually
winning the eager patronage of th royal family. In 1858,
at the height of his popularity, Stangenwald abandoned
the camera to study medicine.
Charles Leander Weed arrived with his brother James
in 1865: six years earlier he had become the first man
to photograph the wonders of the Yosemite Valley. His
large, crisp Hawaiian views were an instant success,
and when the Weed brothers moved on to set up a Hong
Kong gallery a few months later, a local newspaper hailed
them as “the most worthy and skillful artists in
the Pacific, if not the world.” Together, Mark
Twain’s prose and the pictures of Stangenwald and
Weed offer a portrait in miniature of our fiftieth state
when it was still an exotic kingdom and, as Twain wrote, “paradise
for an indolent man.”
Weed, Charles Leander
Active as a daguerreian in Sacramento and San Francisco,
Calif. From 1855 to 1857 he was listed in Sacramento,
at 68 J Street. This address would have made him an operator
at Watson's Daguerreian Gallery. He was not listed in
1857-1858, but reappeared in 1858-1859 as a daguerreian
for R.H. Vance at his gallery on the northeast corner
of Third and J Streets. He was noted as being from Wisconsin.
Another source noted he was probably employed by Vance
in his San Francisco gallery in 1859, and may have bought
the gallery in 1861. Information corrected to November,
1997; © 1996, 1997 John S. Craig
reference:
daguerreotype.com
>>>>
Images
Frederick Scott Archer 1813-1857.
Inventor of the Wet Collodion Process.
Early tourists
Entrepreneur James Mason Hutchings, artist Thomas Ayres,
and two others ventured into the area in 1855, becoming
the valley's first tourists. Hutchings wrote articles
and books about this and later excursions in the area
and Ayres' scretchs became the first accurate drawings
of many prominent features. Photographer Charles Leander
Weed took the first photographs of the Valley's features
in 1859.
answer.com
reference:
It all began really over
a 150 years ago when the first photographers arrived
at that wondrous and most majestic of places on this
earth...Yosemite. The first was a man named, Charles
Leander Weed. He came in 1859, followed by Carelton Watkins
in 1861. These men along with Muybridge, Fisk, Reilly,
BierstŠdt
that followed them, worked in the process called wet
plate collodion. This process requires that you bring
your darkroom with you wherever you go. Given the incredible
scale of the Yosemite valley, this was an Herculean effort
by each of them. Most used mules and employed several
helpers to do their images over one hundred and forty
years ago. The following is a bit of history for those
who have not studied the history of Photography followed
by my images there.
In efforts to advance photography
in the mid-19th century, Fredrick Scott Archer, an English
sculptor and photographer, experimented with collodion
in the hope of producing a photographic negative on ordinary
glass plates.
Collodion, a thick and syrupy liquid,
is made by dissolving nitrated cotton in a mixture of
alcohol and ether. It was widely used by surgeons as
a liquid bandage owing to its strength and adhesion.
In 1851, Archer used collodion to hold
light-sensitive salts to his glass plates. Once the salts,
such as potassium iodide, were in the mixture of collodion,
the viscous liquid was poured onto the plate. Allowing
the alcohol and ether to evaporate, a thin film containing
the necessary iodides was left on the plate. Ready for
sensitizing, the plate was placed in a bath of silver
nitrate. This formed a light sensitive compound of silver
iodide on the surface of the plate.
Once sensitized, the plate was exposed
in the camera before the collodion began to set and dry.
If the plate dried before development, it i would have
had practically no sensitivity and would be therefore
useless. For this reason alone, the process Archer invented
became known as "Wet Plate" collodion process.
After exposure in the camera, the plate
was quickly returned to the darkroom. Using an acidic
solution of ferrous sulfate, the plate was developed,
then rinsed and fixed in a mild solution of potassium
cyanide, or hypo.
The wet plate photographers could now
produce multiple images from a single negative or offer
a collodion positive, such as the ambrotype or ferrotype,
with speed and consistency. Not until the 1880's and
the introduction of gelatin dry plates did wet plate
photography command any less attention from the photographic
world!
Will Dunniway
will@dunniway.com