The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

Commentary on "Samuel American Horse and wife, Sioux Indians"

Gertrude Käsebier's portrait of American Horse and his wife, one of the few examples of Native American couples photographed together, that I know of. I'm sure there are some, but at this period, very, very, very few. It's a very intimate portrait, they're very close together with her hand on his shoulder, and the two of them looking directly at Käsebier. It harkens back to the work that Käsebier's doing with mother and child. She herself does few couple portraits in her long-standing career. This one portrait in particular, is probably the most researched of all of the portraits in this collection, the one that is reproduced most often. Thinking about how she potentially orchestrated this portrait, or how it came together naturally, with man and wife coming together once they were comfortable in the situation of the studio, and how Käsebier took that negative and made it into a print that is so textured and toned, that the quality takes on one of a painted portrait of the two.