RADIUM COWBOY

December 5th thru January 24th, 2010

Opening Party on Sat., December 12th, 6-10 PM

Drawing its name from a Seattle portrait studio operating in the 1910s, our current show, Radium Cowboy, features a selection of thirty original real photo postcards. All dating from the second decade of the 20th Century, these photographs were made in portrait studios situated on the main streets of small towns or the bustling avenues of American cities. They are battered emblems of an era when cowboys were being branded on the public's collective mind as American archetypes. Shot on the cusp of the nuclear age, amid a culture that was increasingly defined by industry, these photographs show men enacting a role appropriated by the rodeos, roundups & wild west shows that were, at the time, romanticizing the life of cowboys. Clad in the wooly trappings of an imaginary West, these cowboys might initially strike you as laughable. And yet, on a deeper level, the photos inadvertently capture the idea of spiritual solitude & intimate camaraderie that is at the heart of our obsession with American cowboys.

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ampersand vintage

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