     
Photo Gallery
Photographer's assistant, and pack mules carrying all the
supplies and equipment
necessary to create a image. Note the portable darkroom
on the right of the photograph.
Below are around one hundred rare and important favorites from the Keller Mining Photographic Collection.
Please be patient while they load if you have a slower connection to the net. A lot of the images have been published in various Colorado history books and
several have not. Many were made by now famous photographers like William H.
Jackson, J. Thurlow, Chas. Weitfle, and my favorite Alexander Martin.
Alexander Martin took many photographs in very remote and hard to get to regions
of Colorado , many of the spots that Martin photographed from are still
difficult to get to even to this day. He is not as famous as W.H. Jackson, but
he was just as proficient and skilled. Several of his photographs transcend from
not just photography, but into successfully imitating the natural landscape with
a painters esthetic.
Alexander Martin also experimented with the special effect of composite printing
of images. An example is the stereo photograph where the right half of the image
is of a real photograph of a pack mule, and the right half is of a painting of
the great loop, and the bottom part of the image is of rocks set up in the
studio. A rare and unusual image for its location and time of creation.
Alexander Martin also staged or fabricated a great dramatic image of a bear
attacking a miners camp. As well as documenting the every day life of the miners
as shown in his image camp on the frontier, and land for sale in Leadville.
Martin also created images of comedy in one image Titled "Pons Assindrum" #236.
of miners coaxing a stubborn mule across a fallen timber bridge. Even with one
miner shown falling off the bridge.
To view a list of all the images in the collection check the photographs for sale
list.
Enormous price jumps are occurring for 19th Century photography by
speculative buyers, many are collectors from art markets
accustomed to very high prices. Early western frontier photographs are
becoming exceeding rare, Many are already in established collections. The great difficulties encountered
by these early photographers traveling to
remote areas in the west makes them scarce. This is especially true of images of mining,
and increasingly more rare are images from inside early mines. Some times
the opportunity to buy an item is rarer than the item itself.
Many of the following images are from stereo view cards, and are details from one
of the dual images. a few are from Carte De Visit photographs about the size of
a contemporary business card. All of the images were captured in Colorado,
except the one titled "Lighting the rattails", it was created by N.A. Forsyth in Montana.
Please e-mail
steve@miningbureau.com with any omissions or additions to captions of
the photographs, all additional information is welcomed and greatly appreciated
to insure greater accuracy of the historic records.
Mouse click on the ones you would like
to see larger.
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