{"id":112932,"date":"2017-07-24T13:30:39","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T17:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=112932"},"modified":"2017-08-04T10:34:45","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T14:34:45","slug":"photos-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos of a Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s\u00a0prairie photographs embrace homesteading life\u00a0in all its complexity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Solomon D. Butcher, Nebraska Gothic<\/em> (detail). All photos courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID:\u00a0nbhips 10236).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

My grandparents lived in a massive two-story home with creaking pinewood floors and lace curtains that hung like ghosts from the windows. It figured prominently in the nightmares of my childhood, and yet I loved that old house, every inch of it sprinkled with dust and wonder. Come summer, the pear tree out front littered the yard with fruit and the paint curling from the wraparound porch clung to our blackened, clammy feet. My brothers and I loved the basement, cool and damp and packed with my grandpa\u2019s peculiarities\u2014junk mostly, shoeboxes filled with rubber bands and fat rolls of stickers from bygone political campaigns. We loved the attic, too, wide and flat as a roller rink, it seemed, with corners so deep and dark I never dared explore them.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the second floor hallway that still crops up in my dreams. My distant relatives lingered on that floor, hanging from the burgundy walls in black and white. None of them smiled. They never slept. They stared at me. They sat upright in wooden chairs in front of their soddies, surrounded by the trappings of their frontier existence: their sheep, their horses, scythes, spades, guns, grinding wheels, framed photos of their dead loved ones. Their lives seemed tiny and brutally sincere, swallowed by the grass and sand of Custer County, Nebraska, a land so vast and so empty it appears often dimensionless in the photos. These faces had a way of sobering me as a kid, stopping me cold in a playful sprint around the house. Later, when my grandparents passed, my mother brought the photos home and displayed them in our living room.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember any formal introduction to the pioneer photographer Solomon D. Butcher, but his work was ubiquitous in my childhood, always on the walls in one house or another. In fact, for the longest time, I didn\u2019t consider the guiding hand behind these photos at all. They just were<\/em>. Yet any sense I had for the history of my seemingly lackluster central Nebraska environs was filtered through Butcher\u2019s eclectic, untrained lens. To this day, when I imagine sod homes, I\u2019m imagining Butcher\u2019s photos of them; when I imagine the pioneers of Custer County, I\u2019m seeing them through Butcher\u2019s eyes. \u201cUnquestionably he was not a prairie Stieglitz,\u201d wrote the Nebraska historian John E. Carter. And yet there\u2019s something captivating about his work. Frank and bold, it tells a story in every frame.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Harvey Andrews, Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID: nbhips 12871).<\/p><\/div>\n

*<\/p>\n

Born January 24, 1856, Butcher landed in Custer County in 1880 via West Virginia and Illinois: a misfit from the very start. Both he and his father filed homestead claims, and almost immediately he regretted it. \u201cI soon came to the conclusion,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthat any man that would leave the luxuries of a boarding house, where they had hash every day, and a salary of $125 a month, to lay Nebraska sod for seventy-five cents a day \u2026 was a fool.\u201d The Homestead Act required a five-year occupancy to \u201cprove up.\u201d Butcher lasted a paltry two weeks, his fickle disposition entirely incongruous with life on the frontier. And yet, after just a year at the Minnesota Medical College in Minneapolis, where he\u2019d retreated, Nebraska sang to him again. \u201cI had seen just enough of the wild west,\u201d he wrote, \u201cto unfit me for living contentedly in the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

He returned to Custer County in October 1882, this time with a bride. They lived with his father through the winter, and after teaching for a spell, Butcher bought photographic equipment and a home studio and opened the first photo gallery in Custer County. We don\u2019t know what lured Butcher into the craft\u2014and for Butcher, a craft it most certainly was. Art, so far as critics and historians can tell, did not factor into Butcher\u2019s work. It\u2019s likely, instead, Butcher mistakenly sniffed easy money in the trade. Years later, after the birth of his second child and the failure of his second gallery, Butcher embarked on the first and perhaps only profitable creative venture of his life: a photographic history of Custer County. After scheduling shoots with nearly seventy-five area farmers in a span of just two weeks\u2014proving his demand\u2014his father agreed to help finance the project, something far beyond his own means. If Butcher stood to profit from the history, it wouldn\u2019t materialize until after publication, when the book finally (hopefully) sold. Between 1886 and 1901, Butcher took more than fifteen hundred photographs in Custer County alone, traveling primitive roads by horse and wagon, his house brimming with the glass-plate negatives.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Solomon D. Butcher, Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID: nbhips 16311).<\/p><\/div>\n

Butcher\u2019s aesthetic, if he may be said to have one at all, is distinguished by his framing: his photos embrace the full homestead, never the people alone. \u201cWhat his pictures really deal with are states of existences,\u201d Carter writes in Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing the American Dream<\/em>. \u201cThe houses and personal possessions serve as more than mere studio props. They are narrative elements that make a conscious statement by both the photographer and his subjects about the life that the subjects were living.\u201d Fixed before what pioneers jokingly called their Nebraska marble homes, their few possessions littered about the property\u2014their pets, their tools, their most-cherished heirlooms\u2014Butcher\u2019s subjects emerge from that monotony of land and sky defiant, tempting fate in spite of the wind and the hail and the drought; in spite of the struggle that came before and would certainly come again.<\/p>\n

He photographed John Curry and his wife standing side by side at their home near West Union, Nebraska, a scrappier American Gothic<\/em>, Curry firmly gripping a pitchfork, a birdcage hanging from the doorsill, bleached antlers on the roof. He photographed Jerry Shores, a former slave, and his family and their skinny white dog, propped upright in a chair as if it were every bit as human as the rest. He photographed widows and widowers, Civil War veterans, preachers and cattlemen and a homesteader named Omer Kem, the first and only Nebraskan elected to the United States House of Representatives while living in a sod home. With little depth of field and his subjects\u2019 belongings scattered about the foreground as if displayed for a yard sale, Butcher\u2019s photos are naturally suited for those spot-the-difference games you find at bars and on the backs of cereal boxes; in recent years, in fact, archivists have begun using digital technology to reveal objects formerly hidden in the shadows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jerry Shores and family, Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID: nbhips 10527).<\/p><\/div>\n

He photographed my relatives, too, the ones in the hallway. In one of his most famous photos, and one of his first, he captured the four Chrisman sisters, my distant relatives, late teens or early twenties, perhaps, standing before the front door of their soddy, flanked on both sides by a saddled horse, their floor-length cotton dresses\u2014each a different pattern\u2014lost in the brittle prairie grass. They stand tall and altogether badass, reigning in the prairie one day at a time, each of them with three claims to their name. He photographed Harvey Andrews and his family, also distant relatives, standing beside the grave of his dead child, two small cedar saplings growing up behind the tombstone, his other young children bundled in thick wool coats, a newborn in the mother\u2019s arms.<\/p>\n

We know only the skeleton of Butcher\u2019s life. He never kept a diary or wrote a memoir. Carter\u2019s book is the definitive text on the itinerant photographer, and though his introduction to the photographs is just several pages long, it provides us enough to assume that Butcher was a strange fellow. Restless. Distracted. Frequently unsatisfied. Living paycheck to paycheck, so to speak. A man begrudgingly enamored with a landscape that hardly fit him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Chrisman sisters, Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID: nbhips 10604).<\/p><\/div>\n

These quirks sometimes revealed themselves in his work. When he couldn\u2019t capture exactly what he wanted, he often etched the missing elements into the negatives. The results were comical, both then and especially now. To capture a man shooting ducks on Marsh Lake in Cherry County, he posed a man in his boat, surrounded by cattails, shotgun raised to his shoulder. He later scratched crude flames\u2014or smoke, maybe, it\u2019s hard to tell\u2014shooting from the barrel, and a flock of ducks flying overhead. Butcher\u2019s photo manipulation was both earnest and absurd, as if a toddler had found a marker and filled in the blanks. Sloppy, but charming, too. I like to picture him finishing the negative, holding it up to the light, proud of a job well done. It makes me like him more, not less. What a loon, this man. What fun. I see a little of my grandpa in this crude fix: can picture him landing at the same slapdash solution down in that musty old basement. I see a little of myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a sense of humor and a lack of preciousness in Butcher\u2019s photographs that I find refreshing, and yet these very qualities may exclude him from serious consideration by art historians,\u201d Carter wrote. \u201cI suppose that it is just as well, for Butcher himself would be uncomfortable in such company as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Nebraska State Historical Society (Digital ID: nbhips 13546).<\/p><\/div>\n

Butcher died in 1927, never tasting fame or fortune. He spent the last years of his life peddling potions and quack inventions like the \u201celectromagnetic oil detector.\u201d Today, many of his photos appear in textbooks and films detailing the settlement of the Great Plains. His portrayal of pioneer life has hung on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art and aired on national television, most notably on Ken Burns\u2019s 1996 PBS documentary The West. <\/em>But while \u00a0Butcher\u2019s work has grown iconic nationally\u2014as tied to pioneer life as Edward Curtis\u2019s work is to Native Americans, or Dorothea Lange\u2019s to migrant farm workers\u2014to me, it\u2019s become something more personal: a tether to my pioneer heritage. In these photos, I see a novel in every face and every homestead\u2014gritty and complex, full of highs and lows, hope and sorrow, humor and stoicism, mistakes and triumphs. I see a story worth telling, over and over again, until their voices, too often lost, become etched into the negative.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carson Vaughan<\/a>\u00a0is a freelance writer from Nebraska whose work has appeared in\u00a0<\/em>The New Yorker,<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0New York Times,<\/em>\u00a0Slate,<\/em>\u00a0Smithsonian,<\/em>\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0Travel + Leisure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born January 24, 1856, Butcher landed in Custer County in 1880 via West Virginia and Illinois: a misfit from the very start. Both he and his father filed homestead claims, and almost immediately he regretted it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":964,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[29711,35,1159,29712,29706,8226,29709,2861,29708,29703,29702,29710,705,3231,11213,29705,29707,14651,100,10443,27652,29701,19607,29704],"class_list":["post-112932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-american-gothic","tag-art","tag-art-history","tag-chrisman-sisters","tag-custer-county","tag-family","tag-farmers","tag-history","tag-history-of-photography","tag-homesteader","tag-homesteading","tag-john-curry","tag-moma","tag-museum-of-modern-art","tag-nebraska","tag-nebraska-gothic","tag-on-photography","tag-personal-history","tag-photography","tag-photos","tag-pioneer","tag-prairie","tag-relatives","tag-solomon-d-butcher"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSolomon D. Butcher\u2019s Photographs Celebrate the Pioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"While Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s iconic photographs embrace the homesteading life in all its complexity, they\u2019re also a tether to my own pioneer heritage.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Photos of a Pioneer by Carson Vaughan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 24, 2017 \u2013 Born January 24, 1856, Butcher landed in Custer County in 1880 via West Virginia and Illinois: a misfit from the very start. Both he and his father filed homestead claims, and almost immediately he regretted it.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carson Vaughan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carson Vaughan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carson Vaughan\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0fbde7208a7f36cfe7d71ceb81483f2\"},\"headline\":\"Photos of a Pioneer\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\"},\"wordCount\":1837,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"American Gothic\",\"art\",\"art history\",\"Chrisman sisters\",\"Custer County\",\"family\",\"farmers\",\"history\",\"history of photography\",\"homesteader\",\"homesteading\",\"John Curry\",\"MoMA\",\"Museum of Modern Art\",\"Nebraska\",\"Nebraska Gothic\",\"on photography\",\"personal history\",\"photography\",\"photos\",\"pioneer\",\"prairie\",\"relatives\",\"Solomon D. Butcher\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\",\"name\":\"Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s Photographs Celebrate the Pioneer\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00\",\"description\":\"While Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s iconic photographs embrace the homesteading life in all its complexity, they\u2019re also a tether to my own pioneer heritage.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Photos of a Pioneer\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0fbde7208a7f36cfe7d71ceb81483f2\",\"name\":\"Carson Vaughan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57bbc1d9e8b641229a6ea945fffee2cb4e42d05e36ba478035f03a5e0a803549?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57bbc1d9e8b641229a6ea945fffee2cb4e42d05e36ba478035f03a5e0a803549?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Carson Vaughan\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/cvaughan\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s Photographs Celebrate the Pioneer","description":"While Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s iconic photographs embrace the homesteading life in all its complexity, they\u2019re also a tether to my own pioneer heritage.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Photos of a Pioneer by Carson Vaughan","og_description":"July 24, 2017 \u2013 Born January 24, 1856, Butcher landed in Custer County in 1880 via West Virginia and Illinois: a misfit from the very start. Both he and his father filed homestead claims, and almost immediately he regretted it.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":750,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Carson Vaughan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Carson Vaughan","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/"},"author":{"name":"Carson Vaughan","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0fbde7208a7f36cfe7d71ceb81483f2"},"headline":"Photos of a Pioneer","datePublished":"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/"},"wordCount":1837,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg","keywords":["American Gothic","art","art history","Chrisman sisters","Custer County","family","farmers","history","history of photography","homesteader","homesteading","John Curry","MoMA","Museum of Modern Art","Nebraska","Nebraska Gothic","on photography","personal history","photography","photos","pioneer","prairie","relatives","Solomon D. Butcher"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/","name":"Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s Photographs Celebrate the Pioneer","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg","datePublished":"2017-07-24T17:30:39+00:00","dateModified":"2017-08-04T14:34:45+00:00","description":"While Solomon D. Butcher\u2019s iconic photographs embrace the homesteading life in all its complexity, they\u2019re also a tether to my own pioneer heritage.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/nebraska-gothic-2.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/07\/24\/photos-pioneer\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Photos of a Pioneer"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/e0fbde7208a7f36cfe7d71ceb81483f2","name":"Carson Vaughan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57bbc1d9e8b641229a6ea945fffee2cb4e42d05e36ba478035f03a5e0a803549?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/57bbc1d9e8b641229a6ea945fffee2cb4e42d05e36ba478035f03a5e0a803549?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Carson Vaughan"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/cvaughan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/964"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112932"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113559,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112932\/revisions\/113559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}