I've been sitting on these two images for awhile. Partly, because I've been trying to find the right way to articulate the memories or the flashes of visions that the first cowboy image conjured in my head. It was basically one part art history and one part a christian up bringing. I couldn't really decide which was the more powerful memory and in the end I realized it was my 4 years of art history that made me fall deeply in love with the cowboy image as soon as I saw it in our basement several weeks ago.
One of the scenes most frequently depicted in European art is the "Transfiguration of Christ".
TRANSFIGURATION: As Christ's closest disciples watch, God transforms Jesus into a dazzling vision and proclaims him to be his own son.
It was the Christ like gesture of the cowboy on the horse that immediatly made me think about paintings of the Italian Renaissance and the older paintings of the Gothic period. The "Saviour" above came to mind. The two gestures compliment each other well and as it is stated in the scriptures, Christ was to sit at the right had of God and so in the cowboy photo the "Christ-like" figure is to the right hand of the other figure present in the photo. What blows my mind is the fact that the Christ-like figure has a gun pointed at him by the "God-like" figure...as it seems as soon as God proclaimed Christ as his son he was destiné to die shortly after. As natural and as intentional, and as holy as this photo could be in depicting the Transfiguration, it's only a studio shot from about 1910...a couple guys off the street dressing up as cowboys and getting their photo taken, it's as simple and straight forward as that, right?
But really, I suppose it's all about education and experience...because I studied art history and was effected heavily by the imagery of paintings from the Italian Renaissance I'm able to make this correlation. I wonder what other people think of when viewing this cowboy studio photograph?
For a great look at more of these original real photo postcards visit them here or virtually visit them here.
PS - The chaps are pretty incredible.
One of the scenes most frequently depicted in European art is the "Transfiguration of Christ".
TRANSFIGURATION: As Christ's closest disciples watch, God transforms Jesus into a dazzling vision and proclaims him to be his own son.
It was the Christ like gesture of the cowboy on the horse that immediatly made me think about paintings of the Italian Renaissance and the older paintings of the Gothic period. The "Saviour" above came to mind. The two gestures compliment each other well and as it is stated in the scriptures, Christ was to sit at the right had of God and so in the cowboy photo the "Christ-like" figure is to the right hand of the other figure present in the photo. What blows my mind is the fact that the Christ-like figure has a gun pointed at him by the "God-like" figure...as it seems as soon as God proclaimed Christ as his son he was destiné to die shortly after. As natural and as intentional, and as holy as this photo could be in depicting the Transfiguration, it's only a studio shot from about 1910...a couple guys off the street dressing up as cowboys and getting their photo taken, it's as simple and straight forward as that, right?
But really, I suppose it's all about education and experience...because I studied art history and was effected heavily by the imagery of paintings from the Italian Renaissance I'm able to make this correlation. I wonder what other people think of when viewing this cowboy studio photograph?
For a great look at more of these original real photo postcards visit them here or virtually visit them here.
PS - The chaps are pretty incredible.
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