Presentation Explores Kansas Frontier Photographer
Kansas Humanities Council
The Pratt County Historical Society in Pratt will host Kansas Through the Lens of F.M. Steele, a presentation and discussion by Jim Hoy on March 13, 2011 at 2 p.m. at the Pratt County Historical Museum. Members of the community, including middle and high school history students, are invited to attend the free program. Contact the museum at 672-7874 for more information. The program is made possible by the Kansas Humanities Council.
In 1890, frontier photographer Francis Marion Steele set out for Dodge City to record cowboys, American Indians, wildlife, wheat harvesting, grain farming, sugar beet factories, railroad building, community celebrations and festivals, small-town life and studio portraits. Hoy’s presentation examines how Steele’s work provides visual documentation of the Kansas character. Pratt was a bustling city in 1890, having been incorporated in 1884. This program will help those attending to visualize what life might have been like in Pratt during this time.
Jim Hoy is a professor of English and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University. He is an authority on the folklore of ranching, a topic on which he has lectured throughout the world. Hoy’s publications include ten books and over 100 articles, and he is co-author of Plains Folk, a syndicated newspaper column.
“Francis Marion Steele arrived in Dodge City in 1890 and immediately set out onto the prairies in the dark-room mounted buggy to take photographs of cowboys” shared Hoy. “After the end of the open range, he photographed everything from wheat farming to railroad construction to small-town life, providing in the process, documentation of Kansas and the southwest plains in the transition from the open range to crop agriculture.”
Kansas Through the Lens of F.M. Steele is part of the Kansas Humanities Council’s Kansas 150 Speakers Bureau commemorating the Kansas sesquicentennial. The special edition Speakers Bureau features presentations and discussions about Kansas and what it means to be a Kansan over time and across generations.
The Kansas Humanities Council conducts and supports community-based programs, serves as a financial resource through an active grant-making program, and encourages Kansans to participate in the communities. For more information about KHC programs, contact the Kansas Humanities Council at 785-357-0359 or online at www.kansashumanities.org.
For more information about Kansas Through the Lens of F.M. Steele in Pratt, contact the Pratt County Historical Society Museum at 672-7874 or visit online at prattcountymuseum.org.