The American cowboy - Richard Collins

In his introduction to Cowboy Dreams, Bob Edgar speaks of a 'far-sighted fraternity' - the photographers such as Belden, Huffman, Koerner, Smith and Kendrick - who recorded images of cattle drives, frontier towns, roundup camps, cowboys on the range, chuckwagons and horses and cattle. They probably knew that they were recording for posterity both a dramatic and emotive period in history and a changing country, in this case the cattleman's frontier, which existed from the end of the Civil War to the early part of the twentieth century. Through the work of a small number of photographers, whose pictures have been selected from museums and state historical society collections, Cowboy Dreams puts together a stirring series of images, which capture the movement of life on the range. That this way of life no longer exists lends additional poignancy. At the beginning of the twenty first century Cowboy Dreams offers an evocative tribute to this fascinating period, a chapter 'forever closed'.