Patient Toil

May 25, 2014 Mike Goad

Here’s another image where online searching yielded some interesting information. I didn’t find anything on who she was or what the “toil” was. I suspect she was sowing seeds, but that’s conjecture, at best. (Cross-posted from Haw Creek Reflections)

Moki pueblos, Arizona (between 1898 and 1905)
Detroit Publishing Co. no. “51208”;
photomechanical print : photochrom, color.
Library of Congress image

Launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s, The Detroit Photographic Company, later the Detroit Publishing Company, obtained exclusive right for use of the Swiss “Photochrom” process. This process permitted the mass production of color postcards, prints, and albums for sale to the American market. In 1897, landscape photographer, William Henry Jackson, joined the firm, adding Jackson’s thousands of negatives to the photographic inventory.

While looking for more information on this image, I found a larger digital version, from which the image above was cropped and colorized. The image background is also altered on the photochrom version, making it more dramatic.

The title inked on the glass plate and penciled on the negative envelope reads:

Moki pueblo, patient toil

Image is from an 8 x 10 in. glass negative archived at the Denver Public Library. It’s attributed to William Henry Jackson.

Description: “View of a Native American (Hopi) woman and a boy on the Hopi Indian Reservation, Arizona. The woman wears a dress and a shawl and has a fabric strap balanced on her head to support a fabric bundle with probably a baby inside. She holds a cup in her hands. A boy wears a shirt and pants with suspenders. Rocky mesas are in the distance.”

It turns out that both images were in the Detroit Photographic inventory as early as 1899.

An 1899 Detroit Photographic catalog lists Moki Pueblo. Patient Toil with the number 05710, the same title and number inked on the black and white glass plate. It is included in Part II which includes plain photographs and hand colored photographs. The other photo, with the catalog number 51208, is included in Part I under Aäc Color Photography. Describing it, the catalog says, “The Aäc Process of Color Photography is the only successful means yet known of producing directly without the aid of hand color work, a photograph in the colors of nature.” Aäc is another term for photochrom.

Haw Creek Reflections provides background information and links for images used for products in our Zazzle store.