Table Of ContentPicturing Men
A Century of Male
Relationships in
Everyday American
Photography
John Ibson
Smithsonian Institution Press
Washington and London
© 2002 by the Smithsonian Institution
All rights reserved
Copy editor: Joanne Reams
Production editor: Duke Johns
Designer: Brian Barth
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ibson, John.
Picturing men : a century of male relationships
in everyday American photography I John Ibson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-58834-055-4 (alk. paper)
i. Photography of men-History.
2. Photography of men- Social aspects
United States. 3. Male friendship-United
States-Pictorial works. 4. Men in popular
culture- United States-Pictorial works.
I. Title.
TR68i.M4 126 2002
302.3141081022-dc21 2002021014
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
available
Manufactured in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
5 4 3 2 1
@ The recycled paper used in this publication
meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information
Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials ANSI Z39,48-1984.
For permission to reproduce illustrations appear
ing in this book, please correspond directly with
the author, who owns the works. The
Smithsonian Institution Press does not retain
reproduction rights individually or maintain a file
of addresses for photo sources.
,JO sn:aa
Contents
PREFACE
A Note on Sources, Purposes, and Assumptions ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
1 Introduction: Whence Came the Void? Men's Uneasy
Relationships in Contemporary America 1
2 The Lost Ritual: American Men
Together in Studio Portraits 9
3 Pageants of Masculinity: Photography
as Cultural Performance 51
4 Merry Bands of Brothers: Military
Photographs through World War I 77
5 Straightening Up: The Evolution
of the Team Portrait 99
6 Whatever Happened to Intimacy? American
Men Together in Snapshots 119
7 Men Set Free: World War II and the
Shifting Boundaries of Male Association 159
EPILOGUE
Out of the Attic- Vernacular Photography
and Cultural Studies 197
NOTES 203
INDEX 231
Preface
A Note on Sources, Purposes,
and Assumptions
This is a book about two general subjects that I believed needed
more attention- the history of everyday photography in the United States and the history
of the nation's male residents' relationships with each other. I have examined these histories
not separately but in what I see as their revealing intersection. I based the study primarily on
my own collection of vernacular photographs of two or more American men together, from
the antebellum dawn of photography through the early 1950s, a collection that now approaches
five thousand images. Since beginning the collection in 1994, I have been interested in sim
ply this: men photographed together, with no women in the picture.
Represented in the collection, then, are men of various ages, occupations, regions, races,
and relationships. Though admittedly one cannot by any means always be certain of the exact
age, job, residence, race, or relationship of the men in a photograph, or even precisely when
a photograph was taken, there are often clues. Better still, more precision is sometimes pos
sible because of such things as an inscription, a date, a postmark, a photographer's address,
or a subject's article of clothing. The photograph's particular format--daguerreotype, cabinet
portrait, photo postcard, snapshot--is also useful in dating, since each format has been pop
ular only during certain periods of time.
Because of photographers' addresses, especially common in late-nineteenth-century cabinet
portraits, or because of an inscription or a postmark, I know that I have many photographs from
every region of the country and virtually every state. I have collected widely, with visits to pho
tography sales, antique shows and shops, flea markets, and estate sales throughout California
and beyond, as well as through participation in auctions conducted by mail and telephone, from
the eastern, midwestern, and southern United States. Of particular use in building the sheer size
of my collection, as well as the breadth of the collection's coverage, has been my extensive par
ticipation in internet auctions of vintage photographs, especially eBay auctions.
ix
X PREFACE
At any given time there are, astonishingly have been destroyed or are still in private
enough, around twenty-five thousand vin hands surely number in the millions, a sim
tage photographs for sale on eBay, each item ple fact that limits the definitiveness of every
offered for no longer than ten days and typi generalization I make in this book.
cally for just a week. Not only has eBay been I am well aware that the racial and ethnic
a rich source for adding to my collection, but composition of my entire collection, and that
my frequent perusal of its photo wares has of the necessarily small but representative
greatly enhanced my sense of how represen segment of the collection displayed in the
tative my collection actually is and how dis pages that follow, does not remotely resem
tinctive the images of men together have ble the racial composition of the country at
been, in contrast to images of women to large. One encounters comparatively few
gether or of men and women together. On photographs of men of color, either for sale
eBay but also at the countless flea markets, or in archives; precisely what this intriguing
photography sales, and other sources, I have phenomenon reveals is not clear and is
looked not simply at potential items for my beyond this study' s purview. With profes
collection but also at those other images that sional photographs, the few portraits of men
place my collection in a comparative context. of color may to some degree be linked to a
With that goal in mind-a better under disproportionately large number of white
standing of how representative my collection men behind the camera, especially during the
is and of how distinctive photographic heyday of studio portraits of civilian men
images of men have been-I also consulted, together, the years before the 1930s. That
in person and on-line, several archives of photos of men of color are quite collectible
vernacular photographs: the Huntington and hence quickly bought nowadays, and
Library in San Marino, California; the perhaps that, say, African Americans or Asian
Museum of Photography at the University of Americans have not as readily let go of fam
California, Riverside; the Getty Center in Los ily pictures, may also have a bearing on the
Angeles; the Pasadena (California) Historical scarcity of photographs available for pur
Museum; the Los Angeles Public Library; the chase. I am utterly unprepared to say or even
Minnesota Historical Society in Saint Paul; speculate on whether disproportionately
the Denver Public Library; and the American fewer images of men of color actually exist
Memory Collections of the Library of (or have existed) anywhere, but I recognize
Congress. I believe I have realized the goal of that they are few and far between in these
contextualizing my collection. And I am con pages. This study explores what photographs
vinced that my large collection is meaning meant to their subjects; I certainly wish I had
fully representative, so much so that unless a better understanding of the role that race
otherwise indicated, every generalization in and ethnicity have played in this matter.
this study is based on the images that I have This book ends with the 1950s for a few
collected. Further, every photograph pre reasons, some pragmatic yet others of more
sented and, with just a few noted exceptions, substance. The closer one gets to the present,
every image described in this book is one of the more likely it is that photographs are still
mine. Though my research has been exten in private hands, with many of their subjects
sive, I have, of course, encountered only a still alive, thus unavailable for a scholar's
minuscule fraction of the photographs taken attention. Of the nonetheless numerous pho
of American men together. Photographs that tographs taken around five decades ago that
