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Reviews
Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840–1865
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By Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn, foreword by Martha A. Sandweiss
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Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2000. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography. 701 pages. $125.00 cloth.
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Reviewed by Terry Toedtemeier
Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
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| Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840–1865, is one of the most interesting and significant books on the early history of American photography published to date. For the first quarter-century of photography in the American West, this is the authoritative reference. The authors, Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn, are renowned for their research and contributions to the field — and, as this encyclopedic work attests, deservedly so. The scope and rigor of this book, seven years in the making, is in itself remarkable, but equally impressive is how readable is its woven blend of personal and professional histories (in some fifteen hundred biographic entries). Palmquist authored over fifty books and monographs on the careers and lives of photographers in the West. Many chronicle the accomplishments of women practitioners, whose works he was keen to make better known. He was walking his dog on January 11, 2003, when he was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver. Pioneer Photographers of the Far West is thus testament to his great gifts and accomplishments and a sad reminder of our enormous loss. |
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Peter Palmquist and Thomas Kailbourn met in the late 1980s at a Daguerrean Society symposium and shortly thereafter found themselves working together to edit the society's annual publication. This collaboration went on for three years. The more they worked together, the more they felt like (and described themselves as) a team. For their next undertaking, they chose to write a biographical encyclopedia of early California photographers. As Palmquist compiled his copious notes on early California photographers, he felt the need to address photographers who had worked in Nevada as well, because most of them had started out in California. Given the inter-connectedness of pioneer commerce, including Oregon also made sense, as did other parts of the West. In the end, Palmquist and Kailbourn expanded the scope of their investigation to encompass all territory west of the Continental Divide, including Alaska and substantial portions of Mexico and Central America. |
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It is fitting that the effort to create Pioneer Photographers of the Far West traces back to an initial investigation of early photographers in California. The gold rush of 1849 was the first major event in American history to be documented in photographs. Some eighty thousand miners were drawn to the streams and slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Right on their heels came scores of daguerreotypists eager to take advantage of an economy that could afford their expensive but much-desired product. The authors point out, however, that daguerreotypists were slow to develop in California and other parts of the Pacific West before the discovery of gold. In their exceptional, seventy-one-page introduction, they note that photography had come to other parts of the Americas much earlier: In December 1839, Louis Prélier made daguerreotypes in Veracruz and Mexico City, and Louis Comte, a pupil of Da-guerre's, demonstrated the process in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo. Theophilus Metcalf opened a studio in Honolulu in May 1845. Tracing the movements, lives, and work of individual photographers, suppliers, printers, and publishers, Palmquist and Kailbourn shape a multifaceted portrait of both photography in the West and the tenor of the pioneer era. In her foreword, historian and curator Martha A. Sandweiss explains: "In the lives of the peripatetic photographers followed here, we can read larger stories about American rootlessness, about the nineteenth-century antecedents of what we now call transnationalism, about the pursuit of economic wealth, about the ways in which chance has always held the capacity to alter one's life forever" (p. x). |
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A special section of the text is devoted to the work of anonymous photographers. Five subsequent appendices include photographic partnerships and company names, cross-referenced to photographers; a cross-referenced compilation of panoramic images, stereographs, and other forms; a listing of women photographers; a listing of workers known only as "Artists" or "Artistes"; and a state-by-state look at the geographical distribution of photography workers. Close to one thousand resources are included in the bibliography, ranging from voting registers, city and state directories, newspapers and periodicals, and census lists to manuscripts, articles, books, and unpublished papers. There are approximately 250 black-and-white illustrations (one wishes there were even more) from a wide range of original source material. The images are particularly well chosen and reflect the rich diversity of the material that Palmquist and Kailbourn have examined. Palmquist began collecting nineteenth-century California photography in the early 1970s, and the selection in this book reflects a collector's love and appreciation of the subject. |
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Pioneer Photographers of the Far West sets a new standard for photo-historical references. It is an obvious first-choice text for researchers, collectors, and curators and would be a valuable addition to any public or private library with collections in American history. |
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