From the desk of Nancy Plain
Below is a guest blog from Nancy Plain. Her new book, Light on the Prairie, is the biography and photographic works of Solomon D. Butcher. Here, we get an inside peek as to why she chose Solomon as her newest book subject.
I can’t remember when I first saw a photograph by Solomon Butcher. But around the time I was searching for a new book project, I found myself scrolling through his remarkable photos on the “Prairie Settlement” website of the Library of Congress. I was hooked. They look straight at the camera, Solomon’s pioneers, and they stand up straight amidst their families and possessions, against a background of infinite prairie. If you peer really closely, you can find little secrets in the pictures—a shy child peeking out from a window, a dog half hidden in a shadowed doorway. During the course of my research, I learned about individual sodbusters. One of my favorite photographs is that of the four beautiful Chrisman sisters, known by their nicknames—Hattie, Lizzie, Lutie, and Babe. Babe didn’t like how she looked in the photo, though. She thought it made her look like a “horse thief!”
UNP blog 