A. A. Forbes operated his studio in Bishop from 1902 to 1916, the same timeframe in which the Salt Tram was conceived, designed, built and operated. In addition, the Salt Tram innovator and President, White Smith, Esq. (that means he was a lawyer) was a prominent citizen of the same Bishop, California in which Mr. Forbes had his studio. Both A. A. Forbes and White Smith advertised their respective businesses (Photography Studio and Law Office) on the same page in the Inyo Register for numerous years and must have been acquainted; we hope that White and family and friends sat for a portrailt with A. A., and we hope you have a copy of it - we'd love to see it!
A. A. Forbes has a large collection of his photos (from exquisite and detailed 8" x 10" negatives) in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. At the museum's website,
Los Angeles County Natural History Museum
is located the "Illustrated Catalog of Forbes Studio, Bishop, Inyo County, California", with the catalog published around 1912 to 1914 containing his works from the studio between 1902 and 1914. Brian, get on it - find that collection, and see if any more Salt Tram-related photos are in it!
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And on with the post:
Photo 1: Freighting Saline Valley Salt (Courtesy, Eastern Sierra Museum, Independence, California)
Photo 2: Andrew A. Forbes (The Journal of California Anthropology, Summer 1975, Page 39, photo attributed in publication to J. McLaren Forbes - son of A. A. Forbes)
Long before beginning our Salt Tram research project, I was vaguely familiar with the works of Owens Valley photographer A. A. Forbes. So it was without surprise that a good number of his photographs documented the Saline Valley Salt Tram. It was time to dig a little deeper into the life and career of A. A. Forbes, but this time, Google was of little help - just not a lot of hits on good old "A. A." However, there was one little spark of a lead - and I followed it. In "The Journal of California Anthropology (Summer 1975)" was an article written by Jon Bosak ("Photography Editor"). Google included a description that indicated that this article contained the only known biography of A. A. Forbes. I got very excited at reading this, and tracked down a copy of the journal, which is now in my posession. It contains an 11 paragraph biography of A. A. Forbes, which I will summarize below. Note the the article states that in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History www.nhm.org/site is located the "Illustrated Catalog of Forbes Studio, Bishop, Inyo County, California", published around 1912 to 1914.
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Summary of Article:
The Journal of California Anthropology (Summer 1975)
Andrew A. Forbes - Photographs of the Owens Valley Paiute
Jon Bosak, Photography Editor
The purpose of this article was for Jon Bosak to present 16 previously unpublished photos of the Owens Valley Paiute indian, take by Bishop, California photographer Andrew Alexander Forbes. With rare exceptions, the author claims that A. A. Forbes photos from his "Forbes Studio Collection" have never been published. Bosak also attributes more than 1200 negatives "of all types of subjects" in the Forbes collection at the LA museum. Barring the purposeful distortion of facts taken on by photographers of Forbes day, the photos are seen as primary research tools reflecting facts on the ground about the way of life of his subjects, which Bosak believes to be primarily native Americans.
Bosak goes on to state that "little is known about the man who crafted these images beyond the facts set forth [here]". This short biography was written by Forbes wife, and added to later by other members of the Forbes family, including his son, J. McLaren Forbes of Reno, Nevada.
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A. A. Forbes Biographical Timeline:
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A. A. Forbes Biographical Timeline:
• April 21, 1862 - A. A. Forbes ("Andy" to his friends) was born in Wisconsin. Other sources report him being born on April 18, 1862, in Ottawa Township, Waukesha County, Wisconsin. He was the 5th child of James McLaren and Lucinda P. (Sanders) Forbes.
• 1867 - family traveled from Wisconsin to California via the Isthmus of Panama, then returned to Iowa in 1878.
• 1878 - moved to Kansas, working as stockmen until the blizzards, combined with grasshopper hordes, destroy feed between 1888 and 1890, forcing them to move on.
• 1878 - 1888 - somewhere in this timeframe, while working with his family as a cowboy, A. A. took up photography. Little is known of his training in this art. In the late 1880s, he began traveling on seasonal circuits (rodeo???, cattle drives?) through Texas and Oklahoma, visiting isolated spreads to photograph cowboys. He used glass plates to take his photos. Ranchhands paid 50 cents to a dollar for his photographs, and they gave him free be and board. Common cowboy shots by Forbes included poses: roping, branding, dipping cattle, cooking, eating, smoking, and packing gear. Another source reports that his photographic work began in Oklahoma around 1885; he used a mobile, self-contained unit that could be transported by wagon or pack animal.
• April 22, 1889 - took historical photos of the "Opening Run" event where 20,000 homesteaders races across the Oklahoma border into "Indian Territory" in a wild dash for free land. These Opening Run photos are now at the University of Oklahoma, and marked a turn in his career. He would be a professional photographer from then on. In the Oklahoma land rush, pioneers posed by their sod homes, Sac and Fox Indian children and teachers posed at a mission school, and took shots of buffalo and other animals on the ranch of Charles Goodnight. Another source reports that he made photographs of Oklahoma City just days after it was established, with his landscape photos capturing images of a frontier town at birth, and including long shots of tents, wood buildings with false fronts, wood frame buildings under construction, and piles of lumber near the railroad depot.
• Another source reports that Forbes found his largest customer base in groups of working cowboys in western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle; he often joined a range-cattle outfit for several days to photograph cowboys and hers on the range.
• 1890 - Itinerant photographer, traveling from town to town by wagon team, moving westward, stopping in small towns to take photos of locals and "points of interest" until he saved enough money to move on. Another source reports that he photographed settlers on their homesteads, but few of these images have survived. Forbes spent about 7 or 8 years in Oklahoma territory before continuing west.
• 1890 - moved to southern California (Riverside, then Santa Ana).
• 1898 - Forbes arrived in California, having gathered a remarkable collection of Indian photos from those itinerant years. Forbes first made studio headquarters in Santa Ana with his family.
• 1902 - Moved his studio to Bishop California, though the date is not clear, the move was certainly made between 1900 and 1904 (other sources report that he moved to Bishop as late as 1909). The classic "Forbes Studio" was set up in Bishop, where he married businesswoman Rozette Prutzman (also reported as Mary R. Prutsman) on June 30, 1909, who managed the studio, and had one son with him, J. McLaren Forbes. During the 14 years Forbes operated the studio, he became friends with the Indians of the area, hanging out with them, and often taken portraits of their families, thus creating a bond of trust between them. The financial mainstay of his studio, was "sale to tourists of Forbes' scenic views of Owens Valley" and the surrounds, including the Sierras, Yosemite and the San Joaquin Valley. It is also reported that he specialized in "mining and commercial work".
• 1916 - Forbes closed the studio for health reasons and moved to southern California, where he was unable to open up a new studio.
• 1921 - Forbes passed away, well-remembered as a friendly and well-liked man, active in the Odd Fellows lodge, community and church groups, and local plays. One source lists that he passed away in Lompoc, Calif. on March 21, 1921.
• His works are included in collections of the Seaver Center for Western History Research in the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County; the University of Oklahoma Library in Norman, Oklahoma; the Library of Congress; the Smithsonian Institution National Anthropological Archives, Washington, D.C.
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A few more notes about Forbes, the photographer:
Though we have only 1 photo by Forbes in our historical Salt Tram photo collection, we believe that there may have been many more. In fact, my recollection is that while looking through the large Eastern California Museum collection of Salt Tram photos, we encountered others, particularly in post card form, though my recollection may be hazy. At that time, I was not particularly cognizant of A. A Forbes and his local photography contributions, so was not on the lookout for his work - but now I am.
UPDATE: 3/27/2010 Brian called the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, and they indicated that they had photos of the Saline Valley Salt Tram in the Forbes collection at the museum, but NOBODY can scan or use them in ANY publication, EVER - all you can do is photocopy them. I find that hard to believe, as the article above (The Journal of California Anthropology (Summer 1975), Andrew A. Forbes - Photographs of the Owens Valley Paiute, Jon Bosak, Photography Editor) has many photos from that collection printed at 8.5" x 11" (and NOT from a photocopy). We'll have to look into this more - perhaps have some of our "partners" make the phone call! :-)
UPDATE: 3/27/2010 Brian called the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, and they indicated that they had photos of the Saline Valley Salt Tram in the Forbes collection at the museum, but NOBODY can scan or use them in ANY publication, EVER - all you can do is photocopy them. I find that hard to believe, as the article above (The Journal of California Anthropology (Summer 1975), Andrew A. Forbes - Photographs of the Owens Valley Paiute, Jon Bosak, Photography Editor) has many photos from that collection printed at 8.5" x 11" (and NOT from a photocopy). We'll have to look into this more - perhaps have some of our "partners" make the phone call! :-)
Forbes photos posess high technical quality, due primarily to the massive 8 inch x 10 inch size of the negatives, along with the required long exposures times, which captured incredible detail. Forbes also possessed a seriousness of purpose in his photography, which allowed him to doggedly pursue difficult subjects to bag a successful photo, which we hope to find that he applied to Salt Tram subjects.
His scenic panoramas were in themselves a technical marvel, since the elongated photos required special techniques. In the ECM Salt Tram photo collection are several very large panoramas, which may have been captured by Forbes - we'll have to wait and see. One view taken with his "Circuit" camera captured a 250 mile wide window of the Sierra Nevadas in 13 sections, with the print measuring an incredible 10 inches by 32 FEET! Bosak notes that it is a sad fact that with the superior lenses of today, the film and digital technology is so inferior that detailed, high quality images of the Forbes era are seldom being captured by modern day anthropologists in the field.
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Book: Images of America: Lone Pine
by Christopher Langley
Arcadia Publishing, Copyright 2007
A quick scan of the book "Images of America: Lone Pine" by Christopher Langley (Arcadia Publishing, Copyright 2007) reveals multiple images by A. A. Forbes. I may have missed some, as the author often does not attribute photos to the photographer, but to the collection from whence they came. Since many of the photos are severely cropped for the limited space of this book format, Forbes name is often chopped off the photo, as evidenced by a few photos with only a fragment of the common "A. A. Forbes" or "Forbes Photo" that was hand-written onto the print.
by Christopher Langley
Arcadia Publishing, Copyright 2007
A quick scan of the book "Images of America: Lone Pine" by Christopher Langley (Arcadia Publishing, Copyright 2007) reveals multiple images by A. A. Forbes. I may have missed some, as the author often does not attribute photos to the photographer, but to the collection from whence they came. Since many of the photos are severely cropped for the limited space of this book format, Forbes name is often chopped off the photo, as evidenced by a few photos with only a fragment of the common "A. A. Forbes" or "Forbes Photo" that was hand-written onto the print.
Page 17 (top) - Subject: Native Americans
Page 18 (top) - Subject: Indians voting
Page 18 (bottom) - Subject: portrait of Joe Bowers of the Paiute tribe
Page 68 (bottom) - Subject: Christofferson's flight over Mt. Whitney (June 24, 1914)
Page 73 (entire page) - Subject: An Inyo Count Herd (from an advertisement from the Inyo County supervisors called "Homes for Homesteaders" and touting the abundance of grazing and ag land in the county)
Page 77 (bottom) - "Station, Lone Pine, Cal", "Forbes Photo" (depicts Lone Pine Train Depot that was finished and open for business in June, 1911)
Page 80 (bottom) - "Lone Pine Sub Station, So. Sierra Power Co.", "Forbes", shows the Lone Pine Southern Sierra Power Station that received hydroelectric power, thanks to the LA Dept. of Water and Power's work.
Go To A. A. Forbes Home
Page 73 (entire page) - Subject: An Inyo Count Herd (from an advertisement from the Inyo County supervisors called "Homes for Homesteaders" and touting the abundance of grazing and ag land in the county)
Page 77 (bottom) - "Station, Lone Pine, Cal", "Forbes Photo" (depicts Lone Pine Train Depot that was finished and open for business in June, 1911)
Page 80 (bottom) - "Lone Pine Sub Station, So. Sierra Power Co.", "Forbes", shows the Lone Pine Southern Sierra Power Station that received hydroelectric power, thanks to the LA Dept. of Water and Power's work.
Go To A. A. Forbes Home
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