Photography in California.(Brief Article)

When the news spread that gold had been discovered at Captain Sutter's sawmill in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, would-be prospectors everywhere pulled up stakes and headed west in search of their fortune. Less well known is the fact that in their wake a handful of entrepreneurial photographers also headed west to cash in by photographing some of the newly rich. The first to disembark at San Francisco's harbor on New Year's Day 1849 was Richard H. Carr (1818-1888), whose daguerreotype studio was open for business by January 25. Photography grew apace with the settlement of the region, which was granted statehood in 1850. By the end of 1865 there were nearly eight hundred individuals engaged in the photography business.

An exhibition that chronicles the history of photography in the state is on view at the Oakland Museum of California from March 3 to May 27. The two hundred photographs on view in Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography, 1850-2000 were selected from this museum's collection of more than one million images that encompass many photographic techaiques--from daguerreotypes to polaroids--and all genres: fine art, documentary, commercial, vernacular, and scientific. The photographs in the exhibition are accompanied by related objects, such as cameras, carte de visite albums, periodicals, and frames.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century California emerged as a center for the practitioners of photography as an art form. The hallmark of this group was a great interest in the various ways of printing a negative, including manipulating the chemicals to produce diverse effects from print to print.

Most of the earliest daguerreotypes were portraits. Not until glass negatives were ...