Carleton Watkins A Delicate Balance

evidence that Vance was detached from the physical actualities represented in the daguerreotypes. Among the key lapses in the organization of Vance’s “Catalog” was the violation of the integrity of time and place so important to the art of photography.

Some sequences flow smoothly from one place to the next and represent the beginning, middle and end of a geographical encounter: arrival, observation, departure. See, for example, the sequence from R.V. 95 to R.V. 93. This sequence appears to document the end of a journey from Marysville to Sutter’s Landing at the foot of J Street in Sacramento where the steamers to and from San Francisco were berthed. Connecting the dots between the three daguerreotypes, we can visualize the photographer arriving from Marysville at the steamer landing in Sacramento. We can visualize him making good use of his time by portraying the Steamer Confidence (R.V. 95) and the Steamer Senator (R.V. 94), then boarding one of them bound for San Francisco, for which the Senator departed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.[20]

We can infer the photographer embarked on a vessel headed for San Francisco because the item following Steamer Senator (R.V. 94) is R.V. 93, a view made from the steamer wharf in Benicia, a port of call located approximately half way between Sacramento and San Francisco. The scene is described as follows: “Panoramic View of Benicia showing the Straits of Carquines [sic], on the opposite coast, Martines [sic], with the surrounding country, also the U. S. Barracks, Pacific Steam Navigation Company's works, &c; this place is a port of entry, and destined to be a place of first importance as a commercial city.”

The textual reference to the “Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s works” could have deeper biographical relevance since P.S.N. operated the steamer Panama, believed to have carried Vance and Carleton from Panama City to San Francisco. Moreover, Carleton first became acquainted with P.S.N. in 1849 in Panama, and eventually the firm was one of Carleton’s most lucrative clients in the decades that followed.[21]

The word “Panoramic” in the Vance “Catalog” description for R.V. 93 is inferred[22] to mean a multi-part sequence. When the parts are positioned side-by-side, they show a scene with more than one hundred compass degrees of content. Multi-part panoramas became one of Carleton’s

[20] Daily Pacific News, Monday, September 2, 1850, p. 1 (HEH RB 125895)

[21] Naef & Hult-Lewis, (2011) cat, nos 330-337; www.carletonwatkins.org nos. 995, 2239.