Cowboy Tintype Display Comes to Fort Worth

Fort Worth’s National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame will be opening a new exhibit called Revealing Character: Robb Kendrick’s Texas Tintypes starting October 19. The display will feature the images of more than 100 cowboys and their families through tintypes, a 19th-century photographic method, taken by Texas photographer Robb Kendrick. Frost Bank commissioned his tintype project and conceived a multi-city traveling exhibition of his work.

Revealing Character: Robb Kendrick’s Texas Tintypes, includes 66 tintypes of cowboys taken all over the Lone Star State plus 12 enlarged prints of tintype images. Four cowgirls, primarily from West Texas, are also highlighted in the exhibit. Curated by Margaret Blagg, executive director of the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas, Revealing Character: Robb Kendrick’s Texas Tintypes will tour museums across the state through 2009.

In a labor-intensive process, a tintype is made by coating a thin metal plate with emulsion, sensitizing it in silver nitrate, and exposing it in the camera before the emulsion dries. A lavender varnish is flowed onto the tintypes after the photo is taken to preserve the image. Making even a few tintypes requires hours of work.

“Tintypes are a challenging medium because they require the subject to stay still for a number of seconds as the image burns onto the plate, but the process provides so much reward in terms of truly capturing someone’s soul,” said Kendrick. “It’s a perfect medium for exploring a subject matter like character, and there is no better place to find that character than in today’s Texas cowboys. I’ve been privileged to meet so many of these men and women through my travels, and to spend the time with them that this photographic process demands. I hope that Texans will see a little of themselves and their ancestors in this exhibit as it travels across the state. It’s an honor to share these stories and photographs.”

In addition to running at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame through February 4, 2007, the exhibit will also be presented at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, the Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Houston.

The Museum:
• Located at 1720 Gendy Street in Fort Worth’s Cultural District
• open seven days a week – 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
• Adult admission is $8 and $7 for children ages 3 to 12 and seniors ages 60 and up
• visit www.cowgirl.net
• call 817/336-4475 or 800/476-FAME (3263)