"The Two Bills' Show" printed from a very rare and very old 6ft.x16in. negative.
My great grandfather owned the Lafayette Hotel in Meadville Pennsylvania. At some time during the great depression a photographer stayed at the hotel and like most Americans he did not make it through these times without financial difficulty. This photographer gave my great grandfather a print of the show and it’s negative in exchange for room, board and money to help him get further west. My father was born in 1930 and he remembers when he was very young that the photograph hung in the hotel next to the elevator. When the hotel was eventually sold in 1950 my grandfather unframed the print, wrapped it around the negative, placed it in the original Eastman box and gave it to my father.
My father moved many times over fifty years with this little treasure and it was always stored in a dark dry place (a closet). The first time anyone in my family was made aware of the photograph’s existence was when he decided to have it framed in 1981. This was also the first time that I have ever seen the negative. I was certainly not allowed to unroll it much less touch it. Although the negative was always regarded as a delicate heirloom we always thought this photograph was already all over the place and that we would just hold onto it until it turned to dust.
In October of 1999 while visiting a western antique store in Kamas Utah, I was greeted by a colorful character who looked like a cowboy Santa Claus, wrote songs like Arlo Guthrie and sang them as smoothly as Burl Ives. Gary Russell Sneddon was the manager of the Poison Creek Antique Gallery and curator of an impressive Wild West museum / collection. During my visit I mentioned to Gary that my father has a great 6-foot by 16-inch photograph of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show. I was begged to bring it in for a look in between each of the dozen or so songs that captivated me and took me on a tour of the Wild West with a cowboy as I admired his collection of fine western antiques. I returned with it when I visited Gary two weeks later.
Gary was to say the least awestruck at the mere size of the photograph and overwhelmed by the diversity of characters that filled it. I told Gary that my father also had the negative to this photo. It was the first time I had heard a crack in that Burl Ives voice. He then began to tell me that it was my obligation to research what he explained to me as what could be a “lost national treasure or a missing artifact of Americana.” My father agreed with Gary’s sentiment so I left for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center (BBHC) in Cody Wyoming two days later. The BBHC is home to the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, Buffalo Bill Museum, Plains Indian Museum, Cody Firearms Museum and the McCracken Research Library. It is regarded as “Americas Finest Western Museum” and the “Smithsonian of the West.”
I met immediately with the Senior Curator Dr. Paul Fees. After explaining the purpose of my visit Dr. Fees guided me towards three pictures that he explained to me were similar to ours in format. They were indeed similar in format yet they were not the same. Our picture appeared to be the most formal portrait of the show and had the most members of the cast present in the photo at one time. Dr. Fees had never seen our picture. He explained that the original photograph had probably been taken sometime between 1908 and 1913. This picture acquired three very unsubstantiated embellishments over the years from various family members. Dr. Fees was quick to quell the embellishments. #1-Chief Sitting Bull was not in the photo because he only appeared in the show for one year during 1889. #2-Annie Oakley was not in the photo because she was forced to retire in 1901 due to a train wreck. #3-Teddy Roosevelt was not in the photo it just happens that Pawnee Bill bears a remarkable resemblance to Teddy minus the spectacles. Dr. Fees went on to explain that the photograph is the culmination of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Pawnee Bill’s Wild West and Great Far East Show, hence, “The Two Bills’ Show”. Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill are seated opposite one another in the center. Chief Iron Tail is seated at the right knee of Pawnee Bill. Chief Iron Tail is the Indian portrayed on the rare Buffalo Nickel. I spent hours scouring the McCracken Research Library and some of Dr. Fees Files for the image or some information about the people in it. I knew that this would be the start of a process that would require due diligence and months of research.
I felt that the best way to begin my search was to research Buffalo Bill himself. I had always looked at this photograph and wondered who the real Buffalo Bill was. I read everything that I could find about Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill. I paid particularly close attention to the pictures. The next step was to broaden my search a bit more. The Denver Public Library is host to the Department of Western Genealogy. The Department has an enormous repository of western history photos and probably the largest collection of Buffalo Bill and Wild West Show photographs ever archived. This was to say the least a very time intensive search. Our photo was not there. Due diligence begged and I broadened my search even further. I called the Pawnee Bill museum in Pawnee Oklahoma and was told that they did not have a photograph that large. * (see update) I researched the Nation’s largest photographic repositories including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Please keep in mind that my search was not limited to just pictures of Buffalo Bill and Wild West Shows but to panoramic photographs as well. I could not find another print out there and to the best of anyone’s knowledge this photograph was never published. * (see update) I could start making prints right? Wrong! I found once again that I was going to have to search for someone with the ability to print a photograph from a 6 foot x 16 inch negative that is really old. That’s right, the negative is the same size as the picture.
Dr. Fees suggested that I try the lab in Denver that they use for the BBHC. I followed that call with almost one hundred more to some of the nations largest photographic laboratories. Not one lab had ever produced a print from a negative this large nor were they familiar with the process. I was for my father’s sake not going to trust anyone with a negative that had survived this long only to be lost because someone thought they could do it by “humidifying the negative and stretching it out.” That was the best one that I had heard. After a fruitless search I resorted to calling the George Eastman (Eastman Kodak) House, which is the International Museum of Photography and Film located in Rochester New York. I spoke with the technical curator Todd Gustavson. Todd told me that “the Eastman House only printed pieces for the museum but, if anyone could do it or possibly refer me to someone that could, it would be Michael Hager owner of Museum Photographics and a former curator at the Eastman House.”
I phoned Michael Hager and explained to him that I was trying to print from a very old 6’x16” Cirkut Camera Negative of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West cast. Michael was exuberant. Although he had never printed from a 16” Cirkut Camera negative he had printed from the more commonly available 8” and 10” version of the camera. He was thrilled to try and get a print from the 16”. Eastman Kodak had only manufactured ninety-three of the 16” Cirkut cameras and they were custom made for certain photographers at an extremely high price for the time. It equated to roughly $20,000 in today’s currency. The Cirkut camera was Eastman Kodak’s first panoramic camera. Michael was naturally very familiar with the history and use of the camera because he owns a 10” version of the camera. He was extremely knowledgeable about the film because he was a negative archivist for the Eastman House. To get started Michael would have to check and see if his friends at the Eastman House had the 16” frame necessary to hold the negative because he never even recalled seeing one. As a matter of fact the Eastman house does not even own a 16” Cirkut camera due to its rarity. I researched the camera and only found six of these cameras to be in existence.
Michael called me back to inform me that his recollection had been confirmed. The Eastman house did not have a frame. He also informed me that if we did print from the negative that we would have to invert the process. They would have normally shot the light (exposed) from the ceiling down through a piece of glass, the negative and onto the paper. Since our piece of glass would be so large and heavy that it would take three people to move it for each print and this process could severely stress if not destroy the negative. If we exposed from the ground up we would only need to remove and replace the paper. In order to do all of this he would have to have a carpenter build a frame that would be capable of the process. Michael seemed somewhat skeptical during this conversation. I wondered if he was beginning to doubt his ability to do it. I also sensed that when he had talked to his friend at the Eastman House about the frame the friend asked him if the person he was dealing with (me) was sure that I really had a 16” and not a 10” negative.
The museum only has a half dozen of these negatives that are all from one landscape photographers more recent collection of 16”Cirkut photographs. When Michael asked me to bring the negative to Rochester so that he could measure it in order to build the frame I confronted him about his skepticism. To my relief Michael was not concerned about his ability to get the job done but he was wondering if I did indeed have what I claimed to have.
I went to Rochester to satisfy his curiosity. Michael was enthusiastic. As he unrolled the negative he noticed that the negative was actually a one to one copy negative. He was even more enthused that it was possible because he had never even seen it done with smaller versions of the camera. He explains the process in his accompanying letter. Michael assured me that we would not be talking and none of this would be possible if the photographer did not have the good sense and unprecedented Cirkut camera skills to copy this photograph to a safer base of film when it became available. The original negative would have never survived this long. We finished taking our measurements and compared our possible paper options. I felt as though I was close to the end of an expedition although I was about to embark on a journey to deliver this photograph to you.
I returned in May of 2000 and Michael and I printed the first few prints. It was awe inspiring to witness this incredible photograph being produced from such an extremely old negative for what may very well be the first time in nearly seventy years. I have done all that I can to try and assure that the publication of this photograph will be done as true to the original form as possible. The value of this photograph is based solely on our ability to extract a limited number of prints from this 6’ x 16” negative. We will be extremely lucky to acquire all 1200. Time is not on our side in this matter. I hope that you enjoy this photograph as much as my family has. I would like to thank my great grandfather Al Daryman, my parents James J. and Patricia L. Snyder, Gary Russell Sneddon, Dr. Paul Fees, the George Eastman House and Michael Hager for making all of this possible.
Sincerely,
Kelly Snyder
Update:
I only marketed the photo for a short time in 2000 and 2001 with great success but my real job beckoned with an increasingly intensive travel schedule. The photograph has already been placed in some of the west’s finest estates and galleries and was featured in Architectural Digest with Dennis Quaid’s Montana ranch as it hangs above his master bed