[Yosemite Valley, CA]: George Fiske, No Date.
Large format silver gelatin print, 13 1/2 x 10 inches mounted on stiff board measuring 17 x 14 inches. Signed by Fiske in the negative; photograph faded. Mount is toned and chipped especially at the extremities, pencil notations and rubber stamps on the verso. KD123-046. Good.
George Fiske was an American landscape photographer. Fiske worked for San Francisco photographers Charles L. Weed (1824-1903), Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), and Thomas Houseworth (1828-1915). After a spell when Fiske and his wife Myra lived in Yosemite Valley (1879-1881), they returned to San Francisco for a year. Fiske was given permission by the Yosemite Valley Commissioners to build a home and darkroom within the Valley in 1883. He spent the rest of his life living year-round in the Valley making photographs. The Sentinel of Yosemite newspaper published a four-column advertisement listing the numbers and titles of "Fiske's Views of Yosemite and Big Trees" in 1885. Typically, Fiske wrote his name in the negative, sometimes with a type font, but more often using India ink. Most of the negatives were numbered also in the negative. This view appears in the list as "El Capitan. From Milton Road." He numbered two similar images 411 and 412. The number on this print is not legible. Sanborn, Vail, and Co., served as Fiske's agents in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Fiske "produced two series of views for sale in the Valley and, at least for a while, in Los Angeles and San Francisco: one series of 11" x 14" prints and a smaller one in the boudoir style introduced by Carleton Watkins in the late 1870s which measured slightly larger than 4" x 7". The larger series, which amounts to just over 100 different images, is inconsistent in quality and plagued with technical difficulties - both in equipment and printing." Hickman and Pitts, pp. 47-48.
These large format images of photographer Fiske's scenes from Yosemite are rather uncommon in the market, in no small measure due to the technical difficulties of producing them in the darkroom.
REFERENCE: Hickman and Pitts, George Fiske: Yosemite Photographer, p. 52-53 and passim.
Title: El Capitan
Created: No Date
Country of Origin: United States
Illustrator: George Fiske
Location Published: Yosemite Valley, CA, George Fiske: No Date
Book Condition: Good
Size: 13 1/2 x 10 inches
Type: Photograph
Categories: Art, California Local History
Seller ID: KD123-046
Keywords: california local history, george fiske, photography, yosemite