JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post   Part of the Zoomology series

This is a quick follow-up to an earlier post on Solomon Butcher in which there two two photographic images that are clearly “manufactured”–one is created in the darkroom (simply adding trees in a tress-less landscape), while the other (below) is an unlabelled recreation of an event.  This is in the lines of Timothy O’Sullivan and Matthew Brady dressing up their images a bit by posing the dead or giving them added bits (like muskets and so on) to enliven the picture.  This one though is entirely theatre–as it happens there are very few 19th century photographs depicting a crime-in-progress.  Butcher just decided to show his audience what the crime probably looked like.  In any event if not for a little Zoomology the scene could’ve perhaps passed for real. 

This is a detail from the full-plate glass negative, printed out so:

Without the enlargement it is difficult to tell what sort of instruments the ranchers were holding.  But up close the wire cutters are simply suggestions of that too, being made of wood and all.