In the 1870s, Watkins became the first photographer to document the missions built in present-day California by Spain to convert and subdue Indigenous populations. San Luis Rey is nicknamed “King of the Missions,” both for its namesake King Louis IX of France and because it was the largest and most valuable of all Spain’s colonial missions. Its productivity was based on the forced labor of Payómkawichum people (subsequently also known as Luiseño), who came to the mission for economic and health reasons, or out of simple curiosity, but after quick religious instruction and baptism were not permitted to leave.

This image was taken long after the 1833 Mexican Secularization Act, when the Franciscans fled and the Luiseño returned home, some for the first time in two generations. Watkins has zoomed out to show the dilapidated mission in a desolate landscape with three small figures standing forlornly in front of it, a stark departure from the colonial powerhouse it once was.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).