Field & Studio: Western Photography

The National Cowboy Museum's digital exhibit Field & Studio: Western Photography looks at the role of hunting in nineteenth-century American West. The accompanying essay discusses the different motivations for hunting (for food, sport, or profession), as well as using the relatively new medium of photography to document the activity. Below are a few portraits of hunters, but the exhibit also includes images of hunting camps, hunters with their kill, and posed commercial photos (including two curious images of staged bear attacks).

Tintype of a hunter with shot gun, game bag, and deer head, ca. 1885

Cabinet card photograph of hunter in buckskins with pistol and rifle taken by Charles D. Kirkland, Cheyenne, Wyoming, ca. 1884

Carte de viste of two hunters with rifles and game bags, ca. 1865

Tintype of hunter and son with rifles, ca. 1895

Cabinet card photograph of hunter Georgie Gray taken by E. Hamel, Lexington, Nebraska, ca. 1890

Silver gelatin photograph of hunter with rifle and hunting trophies,  ca. 1885

Further Reading:

• The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt
• Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
• Hunting & the American Imagination by Daniel Justin Herman

Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra & the Chicago Years, 1946 - 1961

Sun Ra is one of the most interesting and bewildering figures in mid 20th century jazz. An ambitious and innovative musician, he played meticulous arrangements balanced with collective improvisation, was one of the first to use synthesizers and electronic keyboards, and drew on various genres -- bebop, swing, free -- to create new sounds in "cosmic" jazz and electronic music. His persona was equally unconventional: he claimed to be from Jupiter, wore Egyptian or space-inspired costumes for performances, and lived communally with his band members.

The following images of LPs are from the University of Chicago's exhibit Sun Ra & the Chicago Years, 1946-1961 which covers the early, formative period of his career. During this time he left his home state of Alabama for Chicago, and the city's thriving jazz scene and African American political activism had a profound impact on both his music and personal perspective. Here he developed his life-long interests in Egyptology, philosophy, and space, established his own band -- the Arkestra -- and created some of the best, and perhaps most accessible albums of his career. 

While most musicians during the 1950s worked with established labels, Sun Ra started his own -- Saturn -- as a means of creating and releasing music outside the traditional channels available for doing so. These early albums sometimes came only in white sleeves or handmade covers missing standard information (such as track listings), and when rereleased years later were accompanied by entirely different cover art.

The 1959 album Jazz in Silhouette designed by H.P. Corbissero, was the second full-length released by Saturn Records.

When Rocket Number Nine was first released in 1966, this album cover, designed in 1959 by Claude Dangerfield, wasn't actually used. In 1969, the album was rereleased as Interstellar Low Ways, for which Dangerfield created a red and white illustration. Listen to the final track from the album: Rocket Number Nine Take off for the Planet Venus.

              Cover of Tonal View of Times Tomorrow, 1960[?] by Claude Dangerfield

             Cover for Angels and Demons at Play, 1965[?] Listen to the title track here.

 Saturn Records Catalog, 1967[?]. The cover notes: "Beta Music for Beta People for a Beta World"

Further Listening/Watching:

• Sun Ra in Egypt & Italy 
• Sun Ra: Brother from Another Planet (2005 BBC documentary)

They Still Draw Pictures

Pilar Oviedo, age 10

During the Spanish Civil War, Spanish schoolchildren were encouraged to use art to express their feelings about the violence and devastation wrought by the conflict. The Spanish Board of Education and the Carnegie Institute of Spain collected and exhibited these works with the intent of raising awareness and funds for the children. They Still Draw Pictures, first published in the U.S. in 1938, is a black and white catalog of sixty of these drawings. The introduction by Aldous Huxley notes: "It is a pleasure to consider these children's drawings as works of art; but it is also our duty to remember that they are signs of the times, symptoms of our contemporary civilization."

UC San Diego's Mandeville Special Collections Library's online exhibit has made available a digital reproduction of the original catalog as well as scans of original drawings from their collection, which, at over 600 images, is the largest in the world. Copies of the catalog are rare, but the University of Illinois Press published a revised edition in 2002.

Rafaela Jover Rodriguez

Juan Aparicio Alonso, age 12

G. Sanchez

Eugenio Merlo

Julian Barrios, age 10

Further Reading:

• Picasso's Guernica at the Secret History of Art
• Hons & Rebels by Jessica Mitford

The Signs of Nantucket

The Miriam Coffin T House, 1920s to 1930s

The Nantucket Historical Society’s Signs of the Times exhibit features early and mid-twentieth century hand-painted wooden signs of local, long gone businesses. The shops, restaurants, and services advertised reflect the economy of a seaside community/tourist destination and a time before the prevalence of computer fonts and chain stores. Several of the signs have been researched back to their original location, and include information about the historical context.

Browse the collection via: index of local businesses, thumbnail images, or hyperlinked photographs of the 2006 onsite exhibit.

Chenoweth's Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, 1909 to ca. 1915

The Sea Cliff Inn, Built 1886, razed 1972

Capt. Folger's Bus Line, 1920s to 1940s

The Gordon Folger Hotel, 1936 to 1972

The Jenny Lind Shop, 1920s

Crosby's cranberry bog, 1950s