Artists
A to Z
Painter
Albert Bierstadt
1830–1902
Bierstadt painted the western mountains in a Rome studio and sent the canvases on tour. The light was the advertisement.
3 prints
Illustrator / poster artist
Alick P.F. Ritchie
1868–1938
Ritchie drew the portrait of Buffalo Bill that the Wild West carried through Europe. The troupe is ringed around Cody, and the sheet was printed as a poster.
1 prints
Painter
Charles M. Russell
1864–1926
Russell worked as a cowboy in Montana for eleven years before he painted full time. The saloon, the camp, and the hunt in this line come from that life.
4 prints
Photographer
Documerica
1972–1977
Documerica was the Environmental Protection Agency’s photograph of ordinary American places. Luquillo Beach, 1973, is one frame from that file, now at the National Archives.
1 prints
Photographer
Edward S. Curtis
1868–1952
Curtis spent decades on The North American Indian. Canyon de Chelly, with seven Diné riders, and the portrait of Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph) are from that work.
2 prints
Photographer
Esther Bubley
1921–1998
Esther Bubley rode Greyhound buses for the Office of War Information. She photographed the passengers who stayed on, and the dog a man put off.
1 prints
Painter
Frank Tenney Johnson
1874–1939
Johnson had been a cowpuncher. He painted riders in a low dusk light. The Pony Express here is from 1924, long after the eighteen-month mail service had ended.
1 prints
Painter
Frederic Remington
1861–1909
Remington spent a short stretch on a Kansas ranch, then made the action pictures magazines wanted of the West. The late nocturnes are the quieter ones.
3 prints
Painter
George Catlin
1796–1872
Catlin painted Plains leaders in the 1830s, including Stu-mick-o-súcks, a Kainai chief, at Fort Union. He called that portrait one of his best.
1 prints
Photographer
Gottscho-Schleisner
1914–1980
Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner photographed buildings for the people who built them. In 1955 they made the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, pool and tower, before the glass doubled.
2 prints
Photographer
Harris & Ewing
1905–1945
Harris & Ewing was Washington’s picture bureau. Between the senators they also kept the stray cat, the goat cart, and the stenographer who took dictation in a shower.
15 prints
Photographer
Howard Hollem
1910–1949
Howard Hollem photographed the Navy’s training fields for the Office of War Information. At Corpus Christi he caught mechanics laughing at a story the caption never finished.
1 prints
Photographer
Jack Delano
1914–1997
Jack Delano photographed a small-town Fourth of July beauty contest in Salisbury, Maryland, then turned around and photographed the people watching it.
2 prints
Photographer
L.A. Huffman
1854–1931
Huffman was the photographer at Fort Keogh. He kept a record of Montana as the buffalo range became cattle range, hauling a glass-plate camera across the Big Dry.
1 prints
Photographer
Marion Post Wolcott
1910–1990
Marion Post Wolcott had a dry eye for signs. In New Orleans she stopped for a costume shop whose painted promise was larger than any costume inside.
1 prints
Illustrator / poster artist
O'Hand
c. 1890
O'Hand signed the football poster for Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The horses push a giant ball across the arena, a circus act sold as the West.
1 prints
Photographer
Russell Lee
1903–1986
Russell Lee worked for the Farm Security Administration with a patient eye for crowds. At a San Angelo rodeo he turned away from the arena and caught one man laughing. At the Pie Town fair in 1940 he photographed the rodeo itself, and the calves driven in for roping.
4 prints
Photographer
Solomon D. Butcher
1856–1927
Butcher photographed homesteaders in Custer County, Nebraska, lined up outside sod houses with the possessions they wanted in the picture.
1 prints
Studio
Studio
1890s–1900s
The show posters with no name on the stone were printed by the lithograph houses that worked for the road: the Courier Company, the Enquirer Job Printing Company, and Strobridge. The sheet is the credit.
5 prints
Painter
Thomas Moran
1837–1926
Moran’s sketches from the 1871 Hayden survey were part of the case for Yellowstone. He signed some later work TYM, Thomas Yellowstone Moran.
1 prints
Photographer
Timothy O'Sullivan
1840–1882
O'Sullivan photographed the Civil War, then the Wheeler survey west of the hundredth meridian. In 1873 he took a darkroom wagon to the head of Canyon de Chelly.
1 prints
Photographer
Toni Frissell
1907–1988
Toni Frissell left the fashion studio for beaches, pools, and boats, and gave her archive to the Library of Congress. The leisure prints here are the ones that were not magazine assignments.
12 prints
Photographer
Walker Evans
1903–1975
Walker Evans is known for the stern portraits of Alabama. In the summer of 1938 he also stood on 61st Street and photographed the children between the avenues.
1 prints
Photographer
William Henry Jackson
1843–1942
Jackson photographed the West for the surveys and later for the Detroit Publishing Company. The unrestored view of Mission San Juan Capistrano is one of those plates.
1 prints