The Wild West of Yester-Year
Frontier Photography
By Rachel Kovaciny
In the 1958 film
The Proud Rebel, a farmer (Olivia de Havilland) is
shopping at a general store. The shopkeeper encourages her
to go have her picture taken by “the new picture takers.”
She says she doesn’t know what she’d do with it, but her
hired hand (Alan Ladd) encourages her to go see what this
picture taking is all about.
In the 1830s, French
scientist Louis Daguerre experimented with light-sensitive
substances and lenses. He created a process which used
sheets of silver-plated copper, iodine and mercury vapor,
and a liquid chemical treatment to permanently record
images. They called this original type of photograph a
daguerreotype in his honor. Daguerreotypes required a
subject to be totally still for several minutes, which made
sitting for a portrait difficult. But this was still much
faster than sitting to have your portrait painted, and the
image was a perfect likeness, so photography quickly became
popular.
In the 1850s,
scientists across Europe and America experimented with
different methods for capturing images. Another Frenchman,
Adolphe Alexandre Martin, created the “tintype,” also called
a “ferrotype,” which used lighter and thinner plates to
capture images, and fewer noxious chemicals. That made
transporting photographic equipment easier and faster, and
photographers could set up portrait studios anywhere they
liked. Throughout the 1860s and
1870s, tintypes were the most popular form of photography.
During the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, tintype
photographers captured not only portraits of soldiers but
also pictures of battles.
The advantage of the
tintype was it developed fast—a photographer could hand a
customer a finished product only a few minutes after taking
the picture. They required less equipment, so photographers
didn’t need lots of space to house their studios. After the
Civil War, many photographers headed west. Some roamed from
town to town with their equipment set up in the back of a
covered wagon. Others rented a building, set up a studio
there, took portraits for a few weeks or months, then moved
on when they’d satisfied the local desire for photographs.
Others rode to people’s homes to take a picture of a family
in or in front of their house. These were popular to send
back east, showing their family members that their
pioneering loved ones were thriving despite the frontier’s
harsh conditions.
Those traveling
photographers captured the frontier ways of life just before
it disappeared. Thanks to them, we have photographs of
Native Americans and their way of life before they went to
reservations. Images of famous outlaws and lawmen, from
Billy the Kid and Jesse James to Bass Reeves and Wyatt Earp.
We know what dugout homes or sod houses looked like. We can
see what equipment cowboys kept close at hand while on a
cattle drive, or how much pioneers crammed into the back of
a covered wagon.
I think one reason
the Old West remains so fascinating to us is we can envision
its people and places so clearly. We don’t have to imagine
them. We’re familiar with the Old West’s faces and places
because of photos of it.
The inven-tion of
paper pictures in the mid-1860s replaced the tintype. George
Eastman perfected a combination of dry gel and paper he
called film, and his Kodak company soon began selling
cameras that used it. By 1888, they had made photography
available to the public, and their introduction of the
Brownie camera in 1901 made the hobby affordable for almost
anyone. But, by then, the Old West was already fading into
history.
All except the parts
captured by tintype or daguerreotype, of course! ♦