Carleton Watkins’s photographs of sites in the American West are among the most masterful and influential examples of landscape in the photographic history. With no practical means of enlarging, Watkins’s glass negatives had to be as large as he wished the prints to be, and his camera large enough to accommodate them. Furthermore, the glass negatives had to be coated, exposed, and developed while the sticky collodion emulsion remained tacky, requiring the photographer to transport a mobile darkroom as he explored the American landscape. Watkins’s artistry triumphed over adversity. The New York Times called the photographs “indescribably unique and beautiful.”