Chapter 7

Carleton Watkins Homo Faber—Man as Maker

Carleton told his biographer, Charles Turrill, that he became associated with Robert Vance when one of Vance's operators suddenly quit and Carleton was asked to take charge of the portrait gallery ". . . until [Vance] got a new man." Watkins continued, saying that "[I] knew absolutely nothing in regard to photographic processes, and was simply for the first few days a caretaker of the place." Carleton continued his narrative telling Turrill that he performed the caretaker's duties for a few days while Vance went about unstated other business, then, "On Friday or Saturday Vance visited. . .to see how [I] was getting along. [Vance] had not gotten a new operator, so he showed [me] how to coat the daguerreotype plate and how to make an exposure for a portrait."[28]

Let us replay the possible sequence of events of Carleton's first encounter with Vance in Valparaiso: Carleton met Vance as a paying customer of the Valparaiso portrait studio; as a result of the encounter the two established a personal relationship that inspired mutual trust; Vance soon found himself in a bind and turned to his new friend for temporary assistance; the temporary situation became a long-term position measured in months, not days or weeks, while Vance undertook extensive travels outside Chile. [29]

A number of assumptions must be made in analyzing this scenario, for example, when Vance asked Carleton to take charge of the portrait gallery on short notice it is presumed that a personal relationship between the two men had already been established during which trust between them was cultivated. Moreover, any speculation on what the basis for that relationship was, cannot ignore Carleton's affectionate encounters with Collis Huntington as a young teenager in Otsego County in the early 1840s.[30]

Carleton's first days of apprenticeship with Vance would have begun no sooner than the end of May, but no later than the end of June, 1849, when Vance set out on a south-to-north journey that took him to northern Chile, Bolivia and Peru. During his long absence from Valparaiso, it would have been imperative for Vance to have a camera operator to assist his partner, Mr. Mason--who was a trained engraver and printer, not a photographer--in the Valparaiso portrait studio.

[29] Vance's general itinerary for the 1849 journey from Valparaiso, Chile to Bolivia and Peru is recorded in two autograph letters signed by Robert Vance to Hale & Co., 109 Washington St., Boston, one dated July 26, 1849 and the other August 16, 1849, both written from Arequipa, Peru (Private Collection).