Erwin E. Smith (1886–1947) always wanted to be both a cowboy and an artist. As a teenager, he worked on various ranches throughout the Southwest, using his camera to document the cowboy way of life that was fading away before his eyes. From 1905 to 1912, he divided his time between home in Bonham, Texas, art school in Chicago and Boston, and ranches in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, where he made some of the most important photographs of cowboy life on record.
But Smith didn't just photograph cowboy life—he lived it. He knew firsthand the varied jobs of all the players involved in managing cattle, from the range boss to the wrangler, the bronco buster to the line rider, the cook to the cutting horse. He wanted his photographs to capture both the rugged realities and the romance of life on the open range.
The Erwin E. Smith Collection presents more than 750 images from the surviving collections of Smith's work. These online reproductions were made from Smith's original negatives, irreplaceable objects that capture the old-time cowboy as he really was—a working man on horseback. (Online Collection Guide)