Great Western Forum: ‘Old West’ photos expose regions beginnings

Thursday, Jan. 18, 2001 | 9:32 a.m.

In 1861 San Francisco photographer Carleton E. Watkins packed his photography equipment onto the back of 12 mules and struck out for Yosemite, Calif., where he took a series of pictures that helped convince the federal government, in 1872, to turn the area into the nations first national park.

More than 140 years have passed since Watkins began snapping photographs of the pristine environment of eastern California, during a period when cameras were in their infancy. Today we live in an era of Camcorders, digital cameras, 35-millimeter SLRs, Instamatics, Polaroids, web-cameras and an array of other hand-held photographic equipment, much of which will fit in a pocket or purse and does not need a team of mules to be transported.

Through March 26 the public will have a chance to glimpse Americas Western history as seen through the lenses of 17 photographers. Their work inspired the nation not only to preserve its land for future generations, but to settle the wild country.

More than 50 black-and-white pictures (there were no other kind) from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are on display at the Clark County Museum in Henderson.

"The exhibit is drawing not only Old-West buffs, but photographers interested in the pictures themselves," Chris Leavitt, the museums curator of education, said.

The photographs are part of a traveling exhibit entitled "Photography and the Old West," created by the Amon Carter Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, and transported to venues around the nation by ExhibitsUSA, a division of Mid-American Arts Alliance, a Kansas City, Mo.,-based organization founded in 1972 to bring art to small-town America.

Leavitt has dusted off some of the Clark County Museum's own artifacts to enhance the pictures, putting on display such items as old saddles, cookware, weapons and cameras.

"We are displaying examples of things that are in the pictures," Leavitt said. "Many (patrons) are getting very engrossed in finding the (displayed) objects in the photographs."

The photo exhibition does not focus on Las Vegas, and it only has two pictures taken in Nevada (one of sand dunes in 1867 and another of a camp scene taken at Ruby Valley in northern Nevada in 1868).

Instead, the pictures span the breadth of the West, from a photograph of a man and wife in front of a sod house in Custer County, Neb., (1888) to one of Alcatraz Island as seen from the northern end of North Beach in San Francisco (date unknown).

There are a variety of pictures of Indians, including several of Geronimo and one taken in 1897 of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody standing among several Indian chiefs at Pine Ridge, S.D.

As a reminder that the West truly was a place where cowboys and Indians roamed the countryside, there are pictures of ranch hands seated around a chuckwagon, and of Indians with teepees.

There are examples of businesses cropping up in the West, such as tents set up in 1868 in Wyoming Territory to sell crockery, wines and liquor. In Springville, Utah, in 1888, two men named Wheeler and Childers had an undertaker and marble-workers business, and in Spanish Fork, Utah, Jex and Sons operated a broom factory (1896).

Organizers of the exhibition note that photography and exploration of the West, both for scientific and scenic purposes, were coming of age at about the same time, shortly after the Civil War.

Prior to 1860 most photography consisted of portraits in studios, but when the war began photographers took their cameras outside and began recording history.

Andrew Russell, one of the photographers whose works are on display at the exhibit, became the first member of the Union army assigned to take pictures. After the war he recorded the construction of the transcontinental railroad lines across the nation.

The photographers' work first appeared together in the 1978 book "Photography and the Old West," compiled by Karen Sinsheimer (then Karen Current). Sinsheimer is curator of photography at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Museum of Art.

"The 1978 book, which was reprinted in 1986, was groundbreaking in that it publishes work of lesser-known photographers of the period," said Barbara McCandless, curator of photography for the Amon Carter Museum. "They are still not very well known. That was one of the nice things about this exhibition, it was a first look (for many people) at the work by these photographers."

The exhibition on display at the Henderson museum has been traveling around the nation for more than 10 years, and is expected to be retired in the near future.

"One thing that makes (this exhibit) significant is that it has been touring smaller institutions all through the United States," McCandless said, "bringing photographs to audiences that don't have a chance to see work of this quality."

Jerry Fink

is an Accent feature writer. Reach him at jerry@lasvegassun.com or 259-4058.