JF Ptak Science Books Post 1108
I wonder when it was that working people (which would mean the overwhelming majority of people on the planet) first decorated their non-cave walls with art? There aren't all that many images in the history of art (that I know of, anyway) that depict the inside of a yeoman's residence with some sort of artwork hanging or stuck on the wall. This is a tricky and potentially meaningless question, trying to differentiate bits of newspaper illustrations nailed to a wall in Montana in 1882 from messianic Aboriginal millenia-old cave paintings and such.
Inside-the-bunkhouse photographs from the American West like this are pretty scarce things--almost as scarce as nighttime photos of sleep-disturbed cowboys on the trail. They're just not around. The remarkable thing about this photograph (from the archives of the Minnesota State Historical Society) is that it also shows a not-subtle vignette into what passed for provoking, night-stabbing man-images for a society of the working stiff.
These guys may be cowboys, or may not--there is a rifle on the wall over the shoulder of the striped suspenders guy on the left, and there seem to be a couple of dusters hanging on the wall, and some broad-rimmed hats. Maybe they really are cowboys.
In any event they're in a rough-hewn bunkhouse with not very much to pass the time, save for these few broadsides and mounted magazine pages. I find it an interesting peep into an interior life that didn't get seen very much, especially with such period-hot images of women.
And perhaps this paper is nothing more than the barrier that we see so often from FSA photos of the American Dustbowl West--paper put up on the wall to stop a cold draft or dust. But these look too determined for something as simple as that...
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