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