Clatworthy's excellent images
in color, and black & white
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Fred Payne Clatworthy made photos locally and nationally for more than half a century from head-quarters in Estes Park, and while he mostly worked in national parks throughout the American West, he also traveled outside of the continental United States to shoot Autochromes.
"Clatworthy first visited Colorado during a cross-country bicycle trek that took place over a year between 1898 and 1899. Clatworthy left Evanston, Illinois in June of 1898 and bicycled nearly 1000 miles to Denver. He then continued on to New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Washington, snapping photographs the along the way," according to History Colorado's Adrienne Evans, Former Colorado 20th Century Photo Collections Project Archivist.
"Clatworthy eventually returned to Colorado in 1902 and settled in Estes Park around 1904. There, he opened a curio store called “Ye Lyttel Shop.” The store sold a variety of items including furniture, produce, Kodak cameras, film, and Clatworthy’s own images of the area.
Clatworthy would develop additional business interests in the area including rental cottages, a Kodak store, and for a time, even a zippy laundry service. He would eventually marry and raise his family in Estes Park, residing in the town until his death in 1953.
Photography remained a constant throughout Clatworthy’s life. In 1900, he sold a series of Grand Canyon images to the Atchison, Topeka, and Sante Fe Railroad Company,and began a long relationship with the American railroads. By the end of his career, Clatworthy could count the Great Northern, the Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande, and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad among his clients. In 1914, Clatworthy began to produce autochromes, increasing the demand for his services.
A line of automobiles on Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Fred Clatworthy, circa 1925.
Developed in France, the autochrome consisted of a glass plate covered with a silver emulsion and tiny grains of potato starch dyed red, blue, and green. Each grain acted as a small filter permitting the corresponding colored light to pass through it at the time of exposure. The end result was an image that more or less faithfully reproduced the colors of nature. Excited by the advertising potential of full-color photographs, railways and transportation companies began sponsor Clatworthy’s travel to locations near and far. For instance, the Great Northern Railroad sent Clatworthy to Glacier National Park in 1925, and the Matson Navigation and Union Steamship Companies sent Clatworthy to New Zealand and Tahiti in 1928.
Two women on the bank of Nymph Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, Fred Clatworthy, 1949.
After spending two years ranching near Loveland, Colorado,
Clatworthy visited Estes Park in 1904 and decided to relocate. Soon
after his first visit, Clatworthy purchased two lots on the west end of
Estes Park. He erected a tent house on the property and started a
photography business. He used water from the nearby Thompson River to
develop and print photographs. In 1905, Clatworthy built a small
building on his property and named it "Ye Littel Shop." In addition to
serving as the base of Clatworthy's photographic operations, "Ye Littel
Shop" also functioned as a curio store. There, Clatworthy sold a variety
of items including furniture, produce, Kodak cameras, film, and
Clatworthy's own images of the area. In the coming years, Clatworthy
would develop additional business interests in the Estes Park area
including rental cottages, a Spaulding Athletic Agency, a Kodak store,
and briefly, a zippy laundry service.Clatworthy also served as the official photographer for the Stanley
Hotel, Covenant Heights, and the Rocky Mountain Young Men's Christian
Association. In addition, his landscape photography was featured in the Outlook, Century, World's Work, Country Life Magazine at this time.
Two people pose in cave at Hawlett (Rowe) Glacier in Rocky Mountain National Park, Fred Clatworthy,1910.
Clatworthy began to produce Autochromes, the format for which he would become internationally known, in 1914.In exchange for image use rights to Clatworthy's Autochromes, railways and transportation companies began to send him on all-expenses-paid photo assignments to various locations. By the end of his career, Clatworthy counted the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad,the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, the Northern Pacific Railway, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, and the Union Pacific Railroad among his clients.
While Clatworthy mostly worked in national parks throughout the
American West, he also traveled outside of the continental United States
to shoot Autochromes. For instance, the Matson Lines sent Clatworthy to Hawaii in 1926;
the Union Steamship Company and Matson Lines sent Clatworthy on a tour
of Polynesia that included stops in New Zealand, Tahiti, the Cook
Islands and Hawaii in 1928; and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company sent Clatworthy to Mexico in 1929 and 1930.
In 1917, Clatworthy presented Autochromes of Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) before members of the United States Congress. Held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., Clatworthy's exhibition was part of an effort headed by Colorado senator John F. Shafroth to increase the area of RMNP. The senate passed Shafroth's bill, which had been stalled for the past year, the day after Clatworthy's presentation. It was also around this time that Clatworthy became acquainted with the National Geographic Society. Approximately 100 of Clatworthy's Autochromes accompanied photo essays in National Geographic Magazine between 1923 and 1934, and he became one illustration editor Franklin Fisher's go-to Autochromists.
The National Geographic articles included: "Western Views in the Land of the Best" (April 1923); "Photographing the Marvels of the West in Colors" (June 1928); "Scenic Glories of Western United States: Autochromes" (August 1929); "Adventures in Color in Mexico's West Coast" (July 1930); "Colorado: Among the Peaks and Parks of the Rockies" (July 1932); "Sunshine Land of Fruits, Flowers and Sport" (November 1934). Finally, this 1917 trip also marked the beginning of Clatworthy's career as a slide lecturer.
For the next 21 years, Clatworthy would
spend his off-seasons presenting Autochromes to packed venues throughout
the country. Clatwothy's most notable lecture venues included the Field Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Between Clatworthy's lectures and published images, his work was seen by over ten million people in over 160 countries.
"A Colorado luminary, photographer Fred Payne Clatworthy’s mastery of the autochrome process brought Colorado’s beauty to audiences throughout the United States in the early 1900s. Richelle Cross Force, author of “Fred Payne Clatworthy – Colorado’s Color Photography Pioneer.”
Force explained that her book on Clatworthy, who spent his 65-year career in Estes Park, came about as a result of her acquaintance with Clatworthy’s daughter, Barbara Clatworthy Gish, who was looking for someone to writer her father’s history. When Force saw tables and tables of written material, photographs and memorabilia in Gish’s basement she immediately thought, “this is a book waiting to be written,” says Callie Jones of prairiemountainmedia.com, Sterling Journal-Advocate in
Featuring original Clatworthy autochromes, the book tells the story of how the photographer ended up in Estes Park and was catapulted into the national spotlight.
In 1907, he sold his first large photo album with scenes from Estes Park, Big Thompson Canyon and other sites.
Clatworthy eventually had three buildings on Elkhorn Avenue in full operation, an art gallery and studio, a gift shop and a general store featuring an ice cream parlor and confectionary. He sold rustic little chairs and tables, alabaster sculpture and kitchenware, Navaho rugs, baskets, riding equipment, souvenirs, jewelry and artifacts he acquired on his picture taking expeditions.
"In May 1909, during a visit to Yosemite National Park he encountered the famous conservationist John Muir and naturalist John Burroughs, who asked him to join their group and as the two gentlemen were resting and clearly joking with each other, Clatworthy took a casual black and white photo of them that became a standard illustration in Yosemite’s promotion brochures. It is said to be the only picture of Burroughs in which he was smiling."
Then, in Oct. 1911, he married Mabel Leonard and they had three children. Their family home in Estes Park on what is now Riverside Drive is listed on the Colorado Register of Historic Properties and the National Register of Historic Places.
"Clatworthy was introduced to the autochrome process in 1914, by an accomplished photographer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who spent summers in Estes Park. The method used a single glass plate covered with panchromatic emulsion and millions of grains of potato starch dyed red, blue and green, and produced impressionistic soft focused images."
After mastering the autochrome technique, Clatworthy decided to re-photograph all of the scenes he had previously captured in black and white. By then he was one of Colorado’s leading commercial landscape photographers and his work, featured in the national parks, was receiving an exposure in national publications.
"Clatworthy’s photographs were crucial in the preservation of Rocky
Mountain National Park. The park opened in 1915 and in 1916 when Charles
Evans Hughes, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was running for
president against Woodrow Wilson, he brought a delegation to Estes Park
and Clatworthy was asked to photograph the party and subsequently was
invited to present his color slides of Rocky Mountain National Park to
members of Congress in Washington D.C. At the time, a bill to enlarge
the parks numbers and increase appropriations for them had been stalled
for a year, but after seeing Fred’s slides Congress passed the
legislation the next day," says Richelle Cross Force, author of “Fred Payne Clatworthy –
Colorado’s Color Photography Pioneer.”
As a result of his association with Hughes, Fred was put in touch with the National Geographic Society and thus began a long relationship that would catapult him into the national spotlight. The magazine published six series of his autochromes featuring images of Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks.
Almost overnight he had a new career, that of travel lecturer. He crisscrossed the nation showing color slides on a giant satin screen to audiences sometimes numbering in the thousands. Throughout the 1920s and 30s and beyond he was in great demand as a travel lecturer all over the country.
“He addressed prestigious audiences hungry for more of the vibrant images of the national parks in the western United States and these slideshows undoubtedly contributed to the tourism boom over the ensuing years in Colorado and the west,” Force said.
Well into his 70s Clayworthy was still presenting his slide shows to the hometown folks in Estes Park. He died after a stroke in 1953 at the age of 77 and was buried in Fort Collins since there were no funeral homes or graveyards in Estes Park at the time.
The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. has an extensive collection of Clatworthy articles, as does the History Colorado museum in Denver and of course the Estes Park Museum, which was the primary beneficiaries of Clatworthy memorabilia.
“He was a true Colorado luminary, distinguishing himself not only as a landscape photographer but as a commercial success in a career spanning over 60 years, one of the fortunate few who could make money doing what he loved,” Force said.
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