Historic Photographers in American History

Historic Photographers - Page 4

Camillus Sydney "Buck” Fly (18??-1901) - Best known for his photography of the Geronimo's surrender in 1886, Fly was living and working in Tombstone during the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He also served as the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona for two years. See full article HERE!

John C. H. Grabill - An American photographer, he is known for his photographs taken in South Dakota and Wyoming in the late 19th century. Nothing is known about is early life or how he acquired his photography skills, but he was born to David Graybill, originally from Virginia, and Catherine Kees, of Ohio. By 1881, John Graybill was living in Buena Vista, Colorado, where he was working with a mining partner named Nelson Wanamaker. The pair were known to have located three contiguous mining claims, at Mt. Blanco, Mt. Crystal, and Mt. Antero, which was the site of the first discovery of Aquamarine, Colorado's official gemstone. In 1882, a Buena Vista Map also shows he was operating out of a building there, which was called the "Mining Exchange Office."

Freighting in the Black Hills, by John C.H. Grabill, 1890.

However, within a few years he had moved to Sturgis, South Dakota, where he opened a photographic studio in Sturgis in 1886 and soon became the official photographer of the Black Hills and Fort Pierre Railroad and the Home Stake Mining Company. More studios were also established in Hot Springs, Lead and Deadwood. Between 1887 and 1892, he sent 188 photographs of railroads, mining, Native Americans, and settlers' life in the region to the Library of Congress for copyright protection.

Grabill's remarkably well-crafted, sepia-toned images captured the forces of western settlement in South Dakota and Wyoming, leaving a visual record of railroad development, coaches and wagons, mining, smeltering and milling, freighting, emerging cities and towns, cattle roundups and branding, sheepherding, prospecting, hunting, and Chinese immigrants, as well as landscapes. A number of the images portray the Lakota Sioux living on or near the Cheyenne River and the Pine Ridge reservations and their contact with U.S. military and government agents, and with William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Some of the photographs were taken only days after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee near Pine Ridge. From 1891 to 1894 he was operating a studio in Chicago, Illinois. Nothing is known of his life beyond this time.

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) - A painter, photographer, and explorer, Jackson is known as the first person to photograph the wonders of Yellowstone and other places in the American West, as well as documenting the Civil War in a number of sketches. See full article HERE!

Russell Lee (1903-1986) - Photographer and photojournalist who became a member of the team of photographers assembled for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) documentation project.

Born in Ottawa, Illinois on July 21, 1903, Lee originally trained as a chemical engineer when he grew up. However, in the fall of 1936 became a member of the team of photographers assembled under Roy Stryker for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration documentation project. Lee is responsible for some of the iconic images produced by the FSA, including photographic studies of San Augustine, Texas in 1939, and Pie Town, New Mexico in 1940.

After the FSA was defunded in 1943, and after his own service in the Air Corps during World War II, Lee continued to work under Roy Stryker, producing public relations photographs for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Some 80,000 of those photographs have been donated by Exxon Corporation to the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Lee moved to Austin, Texas in 1947 and became the first instructor of photography at the University of Texas in 1965. He died in Austin, Texas on August 28, 1986. An important collection of his work is at the Wittliff collections, Texas State University.

Yosemite Valley, California, photo by William Henry Jackson, published

and colorized by the Detroit Publishing Co., 1898.

Photo prints and downloads available HERE!

Cowboys on a fence Photo Art. Original photo by Russell Lee

in 1939. Art by Kathy Weiser-Alexander.

See Large version - See Detail

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