‘Bighorn Visions’ preserves woman photographer’s historic work

By Tanya Manus

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    RAPID CITY, South Dakota (Rapid City Journal) — Jessamine Spear Johnson’s historic photos might have been stored away and forgotten were it not for her granddaughter, Tempe Javitz. Javitz’s new book celebrates Johnson, a ranch wife and talented photographer who captured everyday western life and some remarkable historic moments.

“Bighorn Visions: The Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson” by Tempe Javitz will be released in April by the South Dakota Historical Society.

More than 100 of Johnson’s photos are compiled in “Bighorn Visions,” along with essays and photo captions Javitz wrote to contextualize her grandmother’s life and work. The book’s introduction is written by historian Mary Murphy, who discusses Johnson’s life and career in relation to broader shifts in ranching, tourism and photography in the region.

Javitz is pleased to promote the book now, during Women’s History Month, because her grandmother blazed a unique trail as a photographer who captured the rapid advancements occurring around her, especially from the 1910s through the 1940s.

Born in 1886 to pioneer parents on the eastern front of the Bighorn Mountains, Johnson grew up documenting many dramatic changes the region experienced. Her photography captured day-to-day nuances of ranch life and changing gender norms, transformations on the reservations, and the abundant beauty of northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

Her interest in photography began in childhood.

“Her mother (Belle Spear) was a frustrated artist. She liked to scribble and draw and paint, and in 1897 she bought her first camera,” Javitz said of her great-grandmother. “Jessamine was 11 years old and she started helping her mother develop photographs. They were using glass plates. Jessamine became totally enamored with what you could do with taking photographs.”

“Bighorn Visions: The Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson” will be released in April by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, highlighting the life and work of a self-taught photographer.

Belle Spear’s original camera is now in the Bozeman Trail Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming.

“Jessamine’s parents and grandparents were pioneers. Jessamine learned to take photos and capture it all,” Javitz said.

Johnson got married right out of high school. She and her husband raised seven children. As a homemaker, she kept ledgers of expenses. One of the ledgers notes Johnson’s purchase of her first Brownie camera for $3, Javitz said.

“As time went on she bought camera after camera and eventually a movie camera,” Javitz said.

Johnson and her husband bought a ranch in Montana but lost it in 1932 during the Great Depression. What saved the family, Javitz said, was the emerging dude ranch industry that got its start in South Dakota. The influx of money from dude ranching helped or saved many small ranches of the era.

Johnson was helping to manage the Spear-O-Wigwam dude ranch in Buffalo, in the Bighorn Mountains. In the introduction to “Bighorn Visions,” Murphy writes about dude ranches’ growing popularity. Visitors could ride a train to such destinations as Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, then stay at dude ranches where they could ride horses and have an outdoor vacation.

“This made a pattern in people’s minds of what the West was really about. There were rodeos, fishing, clean air. It left a deep impression of what the West was for people east of the Mississippi,” Javitz said.

Johnson took photos at a Battle of Little Big Horn anniversary observance, including this photo, “Trio of Warriors” depicting White Bull, a holy man of the Sans Arc, Standing Bear, a Miniconjou, and Red Hawk, a gifted ledger artist who is also from the Miniconjou tribe of Sioux. Johnson learned how to hand tint photos with oil paints, and this is one she hand tinted.

“All the dude ranches were taking photos and using them to illustrate what the experience was like,” she said.

In addition to working on a dude ranch, Johnson used her photos to promote tourism to the region, with its beautiful mountains, lakes, fishing, pack trips and more.

“She started going to Nebraska and talking to travel agencies. She traveled to Chicago and the hotels there would have an (event) and she would bring her photos and sign people up to come and stay at the dude ranch. She was good at promoting the dude ranch and getting people to come,” Javitz said.

Johnson lived on land adjacent to reservations where the Crow and Cheyenne were struggling to find new livelihoods to support their families, while maintaining established traditions and establishing new ones.

“The book includes a lot of photos of what I called the transitions on the reservations,” Javitz said.

Johnson was able to capture a rare image from the time – Native women inside their tipis, something Javitz said she’s seen photos of only once apart from the photos her grandmother took.

Aside from what she learned from her mother and a couple of high school art classes, Johnson was a self-taught photographer. She was inspired and influenced by friends who were artists and photographers, Javitz said.

“William ‘Bill’ Gollings worked for her uncle and her dad and became quite the artist. He was a family friend and went on pack trips with the Spears and Johnsons. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and I’m sure that Jessamine talked to him about what he had learned,” Javitz said.

“Another close family artist, Hans Kleiber, did etchings and paintings. Some of Jessamine’s photos in the Bighorns echo his use of dark and light patterns in the landscape. L.A. Huffman was a famous photographer working out of his studio in Miles City and took many photos of the Spear O Cattle operation (Jessamine’s father’s company). His large photos of cattle drives I’m sure inspired Jessamine to do the same,” she said.

“I’ve had other photographers look at her work and they always said, ‘Oh, she really had the eye for taking a photo.’ She never took a formal photography lesson,” Javitz said.

Eventually, Javitz said Johnson’s photos were displayed in the homes of Javitz’s parents and their friends and even in local museums, yet Johnson remained a largely unknown artist.

“Many of the museums had no idea who the photographer was — I went around and got them informed when I started this project,” Javitz said.

Johnson died in 1978, and Javitz’s father took the collection of Johnson’s photos. There were 34 boxes of photos stored in his basement.

When Javitz asked her parents how well known Johnson was as a photographer, they said Johnson had been forgotten and Javitz was horrified. “Bighorn Visions” preserves Johnson’s legacy.

Along with photos, Javitz’s aunt gave her 22 of Johnson’s diaries dating back to 1919 and some of that information is included in “Bighorn Visions,” After Javitz retired, she spent more than six years scanning all Johnson’s photos and storing them in acid-free boxes to preserve them and then she began writing “Bighorn Visions.”

Because Javitz has far more stories and historical information than could fit in a book, she also has a blog at tempejavitz.com where she’ll be writing more about Johnson’s life and photography.

“Bighorn Visions: The Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson” can be pre-ordered at sdhspress.com.

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