(upbeat orchestral music) - [Narrator] This
is a production of South Dakota
Public Broadcasting. - [SDBP Voiceover] Support
for Images of the Past is provided by SDN
Communications and
the Friends of SDPB. - [Narrator] Old photographs
have a way of accumulating. People keep them because
they have meaning from the time they are taken
until many years later. Family photos can bridge the
time between generations. Every picture is an
historical record but some are more
important than others. Some re
veal something special. And some people go to
great lengths to acquire, preserve, and share
these special pictures. These are the collectors. Four South Dakota collectors
have done extraordinary things with their accumulated images. Paul Horsted is a
professional photographer and has been for a long time. He's shot news and
sports, and also worked for the South Dakota Department
of Tourism for a time. But he's probably best
known for a series of books featuring yesterday
and today photographs an
d the stories behind them. - [Paul Horsted] So, we're
standing here at the site of one of the first
photographs ever taken in the Black Hills during the
1874 Black Hills expedition. A photographer named
William Henry Illingworth took photographs
all over this area, including this shot,
these two shots, taken right on this spot. So, those rock formations
behind me there are these right here. And then he also did a beautiful
shot of the entire camp. Fifteen hundred horses
and mules, hundred wagons
, a thousand men, and this is
also where gold was discovered. So, it's possibly the
most historic site
in the Black Hills. And we have these
wonderful pictures showing the view back then and
we can look out today and match those images
with modern cameras today. So, we find these
sites mostly by looking for the background first. If you look for the background
you can sometimes see the distant ridges
then you can work your way to the foreground. Such as these rock
formations that we see in one of
the photos taken
by Illingworth in 1874. It's kind of a process
of like a treasure hunt. You know, you're looking
for that background first, then you work your
way to the foreground. - [Narrator] Paul Horsted's
work on these projects includes acquiring
Illingworth prints made from the
original negatives. - [Paul Horsted]
He died in 1893. Committed suicide by the way,
up in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was located. His negatives eventually
found their way to the State Historical Society
here in
South Dakota. So, there in the state
archives in Pierre. Most of the negatives, now not
all of them were transferred, around 1921 I think
it was, to the state. During that time I
think they used to just loan these out to people. So, I've found
prints in rapid city, that were made in the 1920's, but I'm almost positive
the negatives came out to Rapid City, were borrowed
and printed by Rise Studio, and they stamped them
on the back Rise Studio. But these are original prints, right from the
origin
al negatives that are quite valuable to see now. Because in some cases, those
prints show the condition and existence of
certain negatives that
don't exist anymore. - [Narrator] Comparing
Illingworth's extras
to the pictures he published reveals a lot
about what exactly was happening at a brief moment
in the distant past. A well-known picture of George
Armstrong Custer after a hunt can be compared to a
lesser-known picture taken a few minutes before. Captain Ludlow on the right
was the expeditio
n's engineer. In the published
picture, he's sitting. In the extra, he's standing. - [Paul Horsted] These were
taken probably within just a couple of minutes
of each other and by clicking back and forth you've almost got
a very short movie, showing what was going on. And the wagons are moving
at a speed that during the exposure of probably
five or 10 seconds, they're blurring a little bit. You can see that
over here as well. So, this is obviously
the shot that Illingworth thought was a better ph
oto. Everybody is a little
sharper in the picture, than they are in this picture. But again, that idea
of watching how wagons are coming into the background. I'm speculating here,
but I'm imagining, Illingworth shooting
this picture then walking over
back over, and saying, okay I want you to sit, I need you to pose this
a little differently. - [Narrator] Horsted's
yesterday and today comparisons are interesting and
they've also been useful. He's worked with the U.S. Forest
Service in the Black H
ills on a project to identify
historical fire events. Stumps in Horsted's
pictures are compared with the same stumps in the
1874 Illingworth photos. The Forest Service
estimates the stump's age using tree-ring data and
they can figure out when the tree sprouted and when it
was burned in a forest fire. - [Paul Horsted] This tree
was born in the 1300s. That's when it was
germinated and grew. And it burned in 1550 and then 224 years later,
Illingworth photographed it. And then 140 some years after
that, I photographed it. So, its been there since, this tree stump has been in
that position since 1550. - [Narrator] Like
most collectors, Paul Horsted is selective
about what he acquires and he's interested in more
than one historical photographer and more than one subject. - [Paul Horsted] For
example, Sylvan Lake, I'm really interested in. This lodge was built,
I think in about 1893. The man who built it,
Reder, also built a dam, which flooded this
little valley and cause this beautiful lake
that
we still treasure today in Custer State Park. Scotty Phillips ranch,
North of Pierre somewhere. Scotty Phillips, in a sleigh
being pulled by two bison. This is the 1904
statehood battle. Don't move the capital 200 miles from a garden spot like ours. This is in downtown Pierre. - [Narrator] This
photograph of Deadwood taken in June of 1876 is
thought to be the first picture ever taken of the old gold camp. But a few years ago,
Horsted was looking at a photo auction site
and noticed a pictur
e that was similar
but not the same. In one photo, the logs
of a cabin being built are on the ground. In the next, the
logs are in place. In one photo, a tree stands
in the middle-distance. In the next, it's gone. - [Paul Horsted] This
looks like a morning shot, and this looks like
an afternoon shot. The lights coming from the west, it's coming from the east here. So I think this
might be the morning of this picture being taken. Making it just a
few hours earlier than the previously
known earlie
st shot. Probably by the same
photographer, although
that's unknown. - [Narrator] Paul Horsted
continues to re-photograph historical views and
he's expanded his range. He's most recently
published a book comparing old and new views
of national parks. He says there's nothing
like the experience of connecting with other
photographers, from long ago. - [Horsted] It's just
an astonishing feeling. You feel like you're
standing in history, I've called it before. Exactly where that
photographer was 140
years ago. And you kind of feel like
you should look around and see his hat or
something laying there. There's a feeling of
actually being right there at that time. (upbeat orchestral Music) - [Narrator] Penny postcards
were the social media of the late 1880s to the
beginning of World War One. Travelers would send them
to family and friends announcing their arrival
at a destination, as holiday greetings,
or just to say hello. Mike Wiese of
Aberdeen South Dakota has collected over 5,000 of
these
Instagram's of the past. - [Mike Wiese] I'm just
kind of a bit of a collector and a bit of a history
buff, and enjoy the history. And developed, actually
found a couple postcards on eBay one time,
about 25 years ago, and it just so happens to
turn out that one of the first ones that I purchased on
eBay was from somebody here in Aberdeen who had an
interest in postcards as well, and so we struck
up a relationship and began to talk about 'em. I was more interested
in the vivid images of the postc
ards,
the photographs. He happened to be a
bit of a different kind of take on the history,
and he collected them for the historical significance
of the cancellation; of the communities and
the different evolution of the state as it went
from a territory to a state, and all of the different
towns that have disappeared, now having a collection
and being able to chronicle and identify those
snapshots in time. So it was something that just
kind of evolved, developed, and began collecting and found
w
ays to expand my collection. So, I did that and
enjoy sharing it. - [Narrator] The second
industrial revolution in the united states
was a boom in technology in many industries,
including photography. - [Mike Wiese] The images are
unique because they were from the 1880s through
the early 19-teens, and the quality
is pretty amazing. Even though they're
condensed down into three and a half by five
inch postcards,
they're not pixilated. They would use
large format cameras that actually took
long ex
posures. That's why in some of them,
you'll see that they're a little bit posed, and
if you've got young kids or somebody, they'll
look blurred because they actually moved and it was
a period of several seconds that you'd get the exposure,
and that's part of the reason why you have so
much detail in them. It was basically the
easiest format to be able to actually produce it, either
mass produce or produce it. There's a lot of photographs; you've seen the panoramic
photographs, where it's a long,
wide one that's almost
180 to 360 degrees, but they were
difficult to produce and then to be able to
market and so forth. The postcard, that format
and the technology basically to produce that was pretty
ubiquitous within the industry. And so a lot of times,
some of them were made into photographs, but a lot of
images wound up on postcards simply because that was the
easiest medium to be able to actually produce that, to be
able to share it with people. - [Narrator] Many penny
postcards sold in
the late 1800 and early 1900s were
not mass-produced images but instead single photographs
taken by local photographers. - [Mike Wiese] My collection
is kind of illustrative of the fact that
there's really small, obscure little communities
that there's an awful lot of images of, and it's
basically reflective of the fact that you had a photographer
that was in that community for a period of
time doing business, and so you would have
kind of two contrasts. There would be mass-produced
penny postc
ards that would have an image
or a modified image, and they were
commercially available and they were basically
a penny apiece. And they would manufacture them
and distribute them in bulk. And then there were
others that were a single, unique image where
you had photographers that would take images
for a specific purpose, for a specific individual,
and it's a one-off just like a regular
photograph would be. And the penny postcard
was an easy way, was kind of the earlier
precursor version to a te
xt message these days. A lot of the messages on
the back are basically, simply notifying
somebody 'I made it. I made it to Mobridge,
I made it to Aberdeen, I made it to' whichever
community it is. - [Narrator] Mike Wiese
has found that the number of postcards that were
produced in different towns and cities is directly
based on whether or not a photographer had chosen
to set up a business in that community. - [Mike Wiese] One of them
that always sticks out to me for instance is
the small communi
ty of Dallas, South Dakota. They're a pretty significant
little batch of postcards from Dallas, which never
really had a huge population. But there was a
short period of time in the land rush days where,
just like you used to see in the old Westerns
and so forth, people came to town
and they lined up, and they shot the
gun, and they took off and made their claim. And there's some postcard
photographic documentation of some of that in the
little town of Dallas because there was a photographer
the
re who took those pictures and made the postcards,
and they're available. - [Narrator] Postcards
often were just snap shots of the community printed
from a photograph and placed in a local
story as a means of income for the photographer
and the business owner. However, because the
photographer often
took photographs of natural disasters such
as twisters and fires these events were also saved
for history on penny postcards, along with community events,
like presidential visits. - [Mike Wiese] Ano
ther
interesting contrast is if you've got an
event like a fire. There was a pretty spectacular
fire on Main Street in Mitchell back in the 'teens, when you've got two different
photographers with a little bit different kind of an
eye and style and so forth, taking images of the same event. There's an interesting
one, for instance, of there used to be traveling
circuses and roadshows and so forth, of
actually downtown just
off of Main Street, of somebody about four
stories up off of one of those
scaffolds who was
literally going to jump off of that thing into
a barrel of water - [Narrator] Postcards
were also used for promoting events
and for advertising. - [Mike Wiese] you've probably
seen postcards where they show an ear of corn that's
as big as a railroad car; showing produce, you
can't grow things as big as you can
out in the Midwest. You need to come here because it's the most prosperous
place on the planet. Well, maybe not quite that much, but they painted a picture
with that and
that was all part of the marketing program
to get people to move here. - [Narrator] The history
of South Dakota communities is often word of
mouth pasted down from generation to generation. Mikes' postcard
collection has allowed him to connect people with
their family historys. - [Mike Wiese] I've gotten
feedback from people that have seen the two books
that I did with Tom Hayes a number of years ago. I actually had one, this
is a number of years ago, from a gentleman in Oregon
that just out th
e blue said, "I'm not quite sure, but
one the images that you have "of a bird's eye view and stuff, "is there any chance I can
get a larger view of that?" So I sent it to him, and he
sent me a letter back and said, "the tall drink of the water, "the gentleman who's on the
handcar from the photograph," he said, "I can tell from
this image that's a photograph "of my grandfather, and
I was actually there "that summer visiting." He said, "I've never seen
that picture before." He said, "I can't tell
you
how appreciative "I am to be able
to see that image, "because I had it in my
mind's eye but never was "able to actually see it." Those are the kind of
things that kind of give me goose bumps and I love
sharing with people. - [Narrator] Penny postcards
being one of the first forms of social media it is only
fitting that the current age of social media that we all
live in has allowed Mike to share his love of history
and penny post cards. - [Mike Wiese] I've actually
got a friend who manages s
everal Facebook pages,
and one of them he manages is South Dakota history images. So there's quite an
exchange of unique images, and it's fun to see what other
people have that I don't. Or people will have an image
that they're not sure of and stuff, and so I'll get
tagged in it every once in a while and stuff, like
Mike, what do you know or what do you have that
can help fill in the gaps a little bit with
something like this. I just consider myself fortunate
to have had the opportunity with my
little bit of
compulsion to be able to get the collection
together than I have, and to be able
share it when I can. - [Narrator] Bob Kolbe has
done many things in his life. He's run a Sioux Falls antique
and clock shop since 1972, he's been a teacher, an elected
official with five terms on the Minnehaha
County Commission, he's an historian and author,
and he collects old photos. But not just any old photos. - [Bob Kolbe] You have
to make a limitation. You have to be specific
because you collect
the type of thing, their world
is really big, really big. So, I said, why not just South
Dakota, Dakota territory, North Dakota, Dakota people. - [Narrator] But
not just any people - [Bob Kolbe] I look at
the images and try to say, "is this worthy?" Is it something thats kind
of neat and interesting and should be preserved. So, all of my photos
have been selected. They're not just a
shoe box full of images that were under grandmas
bed and somebody said, here, and you bought them, I may
have boug
ht the shoebox, but then I took out a half
dozen or dozen photos. Then passed the rest
on to someone else. - [Narrator] Kolbe goes
to a lot of flea markets and photo swaps. He says the key to
knowing whether or
not a photo has value, historical or otherwise, is
knowing more about history than the next person. - Because their eyes are
seeing it as an image. Yeah, it's kind of
interesting to them. But if you know
the local history, the regional
history, you'll say, that image records something
tha
t hasn't shown up before. - [Narrator] Take for example a photo called "The
Drinking Party." The picture is by
William Illingworth, the official photographer
of Custers' expedition to the Black Hills in 1874. - [Bob Kolbe] When
Custer and crowd went to climb Harney Peak,
now Black Elk Peak, they put up a covering
and they put out a table and they were drinking beer
and had a good party that day. That didn't get published. Probably because Custer
was both a teetotaler and you might say he was a
l
ittle bit arrogant at times. Well, the publication of
this, likely took place after he died at
the Little Big Horn. But in the group, one of
the people in that circle, was a man by the name
of Colonel Grant. Ulysses S. Grant's son. He was a full colonel. Custer ran the operation,
he was along just for, some would say S and G, he
was just kind of to keep tabs on Custer. But he did outrank him. Which is kind of interesting
that that took place. Because Custer and Grant
did not always get along. Th
ey were a little antagonistic,
but when the son along, you have evidence that
Grant had a presence in the Black Hills during
the Custer tour through. - [Narrator] Kolbe has
collected a lot of images of South Dakotans involved
in the Spanish American war. - [Bob Kolbe]
Everybody got a gun. - [Narrator] He also
has a lot of pictures of Native Americans. - The images of Native Americans
across the United States were a commodity, people
would buy pictures of Native Americans because
they were enamor
ed with them. The photographer might
give them a photo. He would give them one, but
he would have the negative. And once you have the negative you can make a hundred images. - [Narrator] Old pictures
can be interesting and they can also be useful. Bob Kolbe has a number
of pictures taken during the construction and eventual
failure of a spillway at the end of a diversion canal on the north side
of Sioux Falls. A number of photographers
snapped pictures of the flood from a number of angles. The S
ioux River still floods so the pictures serve
as a reminder that. - The same thing
could happen again. - [Narrator] Kolbe's
entire collection is large. Only a tiny fraction will
fit on his dining room table. It's also a valuable collection, well over seven
figures, Kolbe says. As a collector,
that's where Bob Kolbe is a little different. This is more than a hobby. But perhaps old pictures
are most valuable because they can create
connections between the people who look at them. - [Bob Kolbe] A
m
arginal photograph is better than a
Hemingway description. Because if I am a writer,
and I write about, lets says the diversion canal, you will imagine what it looked
like from your experiences without ever seeing it. But if I have a photo
and we both look at it, we both see the same thing and
we both can make a judgment on what was happening there, because we have a common
point of reference. - [Narrator] Today's social
media sites have become repository's for a vast
number of historical images
. One of the most popular pages
for South Dakota history is called South Dakota
History Of Cities, Towns, Places And People
Who Made It Great. It was started by David
Fransen, a veteran, a lawyer, and now, by popular consensus
at least, an historian. His interest in the past started
when he was in his teens. - Looking at my grandmother and not knowing who she is as far as how did she get here, what's her background? And that's kind of
where it all started. - [Narrator] Fransen saved
and studied
family photographs and asked a lot of
questions of his relatives, but he wasn't
deeply into history until an uncle passed away. leaving behind some items
of historical interest, including thousands
of photographs. - [David Fransen]
And when he died, the rest of the family
delivered all that stuff to me. - [Narrator] He began
scanning the prints and storing the digitized
images on computer hard drives. He focused first on
the family pictures and worked at getting the
stories behind the pictures f
rom elder relatives. But the deeper he got
into the collection, the more he began to
realize what he had. - [David Fransen] Photographs
that I quickly decided had more of a state
wide history interest, rather than just a
family history interest. I wasn't sure, I hated to
just put them back in the box and put them on a shelf. I knew they would be on
interest to somebody. And so what I did was I
set up a Facebook page, a Facebook group,
without any particular goals in mind other
that to just keep
those particular
photographs, for now. Until I decided what we
needed to do with them. - [Narrator] The
group grew quickly. - [David Fransen] In the
last 15 months it's grown from 400 to 19,000. And so there is a big interest
in South Dakota History. - [Narrator] Fransen's Facebook
posts are no longer limited to just the pictures
in his own collection. He reposts pictures from
a variety of sources, as do other group members. People routinely post images about which they
know very little, hoping
other group
members will recognize a person or place and
restore the lost history. - [David Fransen] It
doesn't take much work. It manages itself just
because it's made up of people who have such an intense
history interest, local history. - [Narrator] Some of
Fransens posts tell stories that span decades. This picture shows a
homesteader relative building a round barn in Potter
County in the 1920s. - [David Fransen] And he
started building that barn one summer and they
finished it one summer. B
ut they set up this barn and
they used it for everything. They had a hog operation
they ran out of this barn. They had a beef
cattle operation run out of this big round barn. Everything to try to make a
dollar to stay in business and stay alive and it's
still sitting there. - [Narrator] Several of
Fransen's family stories show how personal
local history can be. His maternal grandmother
was born to homesteaders living in Forest City. The Cheyenne River
Agency was located directly across the river
. People went back and
forth across the river by boat and later by ferry. - [David Fransen] My
great grandmother, one of the things that she
did, she was a midwife, and delivered a lot of babies
on both sides of the river. In the Forest City are and also
in Native American community on the Cheyenne
river reservation. - [Narrator] David Fransen
has a lot of photos from his hometown of Gettysburg. Like most rural
South Dakota towns, Gettysburg has changed. - [David Fransen] Just to
go through 40 o
r 50 or 60 or 80 years of photographs
and see how this community was built and what
they were busy doing in 1910 versus what they
were busy doing in 1980. It's interesting to
look at the main street that they had to deal with,
that you know that they were there on those sidewalks
every Saturday afternoon. Whether it was in
De Smet South Dakota or Gettysburg South Dakota. And there's a blacksmiths shop
there that served everybody. Including my ancestors and
everybody else who lived there. - [Narr
ator] People in
Fransens Facebook page share similar interests but don't always
share similar views. especially regarding the
massacre at Wounded Knee. Fransen and a co-moderator
will intervene in any online conversation that strays
too far from civility, but they welcome an
exchange of perspectives. - [David Fransen] What we
wanted to make sure happened is that using Wounded
Knee as a an example, that people know about it, and our young people
know about it. - [Narrator] Fransens
Facebook group
is one of several
devoted to state history. A lot of people communicate
and share in multiple groups. David Fransen admits
that the online community can be entertaining, but he
has a higher purpose in mind. - [David Fransen] There's things
about our past that we need to know and it's
not always pleasant. We have to know how we got here, in order to know we as a society and even our individual
families are going from here. We have to know
where we've been, we have to know the road that
we've tra
veled to get here. (upbeat orchestral music)
Comments