"The Two Bills' Show" printed from a very rare and very old 6ft.x16in. negative.
“I cherish this piece and so do my clients.
The accompanying book and incredible story make it the ideal conversation piece.” -Interior Designer-
"The most complete photograph ever taken of the show."
— Paul Fees, former curator, Buffalo Bill Museum, Cody, Wyoming
Nearly everyone in this photograph earned their place on a horse. Look closely and you'll find cowboys and cowgirls, Sioux and Cheyenne Native American performers, Mexican vaqueros, Russian Cossacks, French Zouaves, Turkish horse-riding acrobats, American equestrians, Riff Arabs, Dahomians, Singhalese and Japanese performers — the finest riders of their era, gathered from around the world into a single show. This is what the Wild West show really was: a gathering of the world's great horsemen. And this photograph holds all of them at once.
Chief Iron Tail is in this photograph. The Oglala Lakota leader appears here — photographed in May 1912, the year before the 1913 Buffalo nickel was issued. Sculptor James Earle Fraser credited Iron Tail as one of the models for the Indian Head profile on that famous coin. For collectors, that makes this more than a photograph: it is a portrait of one of the faces behind a coin millions of Americans once carried — captured before the coin existed.
The negative is six feet long. This photograph was made with a 16-inch Eastman Kodak Cirkut panoramic camera — only 93 were ever built, and fewer than a handful survive. The working negative measures 6 feet by 16 inches: the same size as the photograph itself. No enlargement. Each print is made by hand in a traditional darkroom by master printer Michael Hager, former curator at George Eastman House, on Ilford Multigrade RC Warmtone paper — in classic black & white or brown-toned. For anyone who loves film, large format, or the darkroom: this is as pure as photographic printing gets.
Donated prints are held by the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; Buffalo Bill's Gravesite Museum in Golden, Colorado; and the Pawnee Bill Museum in Pawnee, Oklahoma. The photograph was featured in Architectural Digest in October 2003 — and at 69 inches wide, it commands a wall the way few pieces can.
A numbered edition of 1,200. Each print measures 69 x 14.5 inches, is hand-printed in the darkroom, and is individually numbered as part of a limited edition of 1,200 — a little over half have been printed to date. Every print ships with a coffee-table book engraved with your edition number and a certificate of limitation.
Bring the Wild West home. Prints are available by inquiry — visit the Contact page or call 435-640-2044. The Dusty Negative Inc., Park City, Utah. Wild West Picture is the official home of the photograph.