Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2010
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).
Abstract
The rise of photography in the United States coincided with the spread of Manifest Destiny, and this handsome exhibit catalogue presents a veritable photographic who's who of the men (and a few women) who were pivotal actors in both the conquest and representation of the American West. The National Portrait Gallery organized the exhibition, Faces of the Frontier, in 2009, with travels to the San Diego Historical Society and the Gilcrease Museum in 2010. The book consists of essays by curator Frank H. Goodyear III and Richard White and the portraits themselves, accompanied by biographical captions.
Four thematic sections divide the images: land, exploration, discord, and possibilities. The first image, fittingly, is of President James K. Polk, architect of midcentury expansion; the last is of Karl Struss, a Hollywood cinematographer who worked for Cecil B. DeMille. For the most part, these are well-known figures and often well-known photographs: the stereograph of George Armstrong Custer with a dead grizzly bear or very familiar prints of Sarah Winnemucca and Annie Oakley. But there are also some arresting, unusual photographs: a portrait of John Brown looking like an elderly history professor; photographer F. Jay Haynes, swaddled in fur clothing, icicles hanging from his moustache, phlegmatically taking notes on the wonders of Yellowstone; on facing pages a sober-visaged Sam Houston in an exuberant checked waistcoat and William Walker in a velvet-collared coat looking meek as milquetoast.
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.