Book Launch: The Life and Times of Charles J. Belden
Please join us for an event to launch the new book, “The Life and Times of Charles J. Belden, Cowboy Photographer,” at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West on Friday, October 11. The evening includes a reception of hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar, a presentation by publisher Brooks Roddan and our own Mack Frost, who has digitized our McCracken Research Library’s large collection of Belden photographs and negatives. The event is followed by a book signing. Our Points West Market store will have copies of the book for purchase.
From the publisher: “The Life and Times of Charles J. Belden, Cowboy Photographer” is scheduled for a Fall 2024 release according to the publisher, the first monograph to be published featuring the work of the legendary Wyoming photographer.
“Belden belongs to that great tradition of world-class photographers—Carelton Watkins, Ansel Adams, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Berenice Abbot come to mind,” says publisher Brooks Roddan whose independent press, IFSF Publishing, is located in San Francisco and northwest Wyoming. “We’re thrilled to be bringing the book out, a long-time labor of love, the result of a real collaborative effort of people aware of Belden’s work. New readers will discover for the first time an artist whose photographs are a vivid, authentically iconic portrait of the American West.”
“We were happily surprised to learn that a book on Belden hadn’t yet been done,” says Roddan.
“I’ve been traveling around Wyoming for years, and it was as if I kept seeing Belden images whenever I was there—they get into your soul, it’s like you can’t stop seeing them. Belden’s life story too is a kind of saga—eventful, adventurous, daring, a series of episodes that a feature- length movie could be made of—a ‘Grand Tour’ of a life.”
Belden, born in San Francisco in 1887, became co-owner of the legendary Pitchfork Ranch in Meeteetse, Wyoming with his then-partner Eugene Phelps. Belden and Phelps ran the ranch from the early 1920s, until Belden left Wyoming and moved to Florida in 1940. Belden’s black & white photos were often featured in national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, National Geographic, the Denver Post, and many other publications, quickly establishing in the public imagination the image of a west of endless skies, vast landscapes where herds of cattle, buffalo, and antelope roamed, the ranch-hands sitting beside the campfire.
“The Life and Times of Charles J. Belden, Cowboy Photographer,” features more than 80 photographic reproductions, digitally created from Belden’s original glass plate negatives, essays by Mack Frost and publisher Roddan, and a Timeline 1888–1966 documenting Belden’s life and times.
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