The Kolb Brothers Pioneering Landscape Photographers

Introduction

The men must have felt some relief as they climbed up out of Separation Canyon. Leaving behind the tension of the expedition and the foreboding of that dark thundering canyon; constantly wet, cold and afraid. Now they move through the forest on the canyon rim and come face-to-face with what must they have thought of as savages. Weaponless and white they were set upon as retribution for some earlier atrocity on the tribe and quickly dispatched. 

Thus ended the journey for these men in 1869, some of the first white men to explore the Green and Colorado Rivers, John Wesley Powell and the rest of the expedition had carried on after leaving these men to their fates and completed the journey exiting the Grand Canyon near the Virgin River where Lake Meade is today. Really there was not that much further to go for the three lost men, but at the time nobody knew what was ahead. The perils of being first.

Not many years later and many fewer expeditions down the Green and Colorado later came the Kolb brothers. 

Lightning over the Grand Canyon (Kolb Brothers)

Books and the Colorado River

Again my summer holiday takes me to Northern Idaho to see my family. And again we find ourselves at our favorite bookstore, Bonner’s Books. Well curated with an interesting selection of new and used books it is always a place to visit in downtown Bonner’s Ferry and a bite of lunch at the Rusty Moose afterwards. 

Last year I stumbled on a one gem called The Glory of Our West which I recounted as a series of articles on some of the featured photographers beginning here in 6 parts. 

I also stumbled upon an Eliot Porter book Down the Colorado; Diary of the First Trip Through the Grand Canyon, 1869. (This book includes John Wesley Powell's account of floating the Grand canyon for the first time. I recommend this story as a great read.) Always interested in Eliot Porter and having grown up near the Grand Canyon I bought the book ($8.00 in hard copy). 

This reminded me of another Eliot Porter book I have wanted to own for decades. (The Place No One Knew) (I found one copy online in the UK for £45 where it is easily twice this in the US as the UK probably does not have the same appreciation of Glen Canyon.)  The former book has some really nice photos to go along with the text. Many of them classic Porter being intimate rather than grand vistas. The second was somewhat disappointing, the images did not in my mind do the subject justice and the colors are off either in reproduction or with age. 

The Place No One Knew I learned about from reading Edward Abbey's classic Desert Solitaire where he describes a river trip down the Colorado at Glen Canyon before Glen Canyon dam drowned it in water and boaters in what is now Lake Powell in 1963. Eliot Porter went on a similar journey with Tad Nichols a river guide and photographer in his own right. 

The Kolb Brothers

On this latest visit I found another book on the Grand Canyon ; Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico by Ellsworth Kolb. It has a striking cover with a lithograph of a hand-colored black and white print on the dust jacket. First published in 1917 it has been through 17 or more printings through the years. Mine is the 15th edition printed in 1965.

Cover and Dust Jacket

Signed by Ellsworth’s brother Emery it’s personalized message is to a family from Pendleton Oregon and somehow made it to Bonner’s Books in Northern Idaho probably in an estate sale.

Inscription and Signature of Emery Kolb

I did a little research on the Hughes'. Marie died in 2017, her husband in 2015  at age 99. Their daughter born in 1955 died in 1983 just 27 year old. She would have been 12 when her family visited the Grand Canyon and met Emery Kolb aged 86 1/2.  

The story of the Kolb brothers is an interesting story of photographer brothers at the earliest part of the 20th century. Ellsworth Kolb the older brother by five years was born in 1876 seven years after John Wesley Powell made his historic expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers. 

The Kolb Brothers

From their home in Pennsylvania they became aware of the Grand Canyon. Not yet a national park, they traveled to Northern Arizona to setup a photography business in 1902.  Ellsworth first traveled to the Grand Canyon in 1901 and enticed his younger brother to follow a year later. Their travels brought them to Williams Arizona where one would board a train to the Grand Canyon. In a chance meeting in Williams Emery found a local photography business was for sale. Some time later they decided to relocate to the Grand Canyon itself. 

The Business

For the first few years they lived in a tent before they got permission from Ralph Cameron to build a studio right on the rim at the the Bright Angel trail-head. Even at that time  there were mule trips for tourists into the bottom of the Canyon as there are today. And here was their business of taking photographs of the tourists as they headed down for their day long ride to the river and back again. The Kolbs would then in the meantime develop and print the photos so they could deliver the photos to the tourists when they returned from the bottom of the canyon. 

One problem they had to contend with was a shortage of clean water to develop the film. They decided to build a darkroom in the canyon at Indian Gardens some five miles hike below the rim. Here the film was developed and washed then hiked back up in time to deliver prints to the tourists when they returned. 

They also produced a leather-bound book of hand-colored photographs which they sold for 3 dollars each. 

Example Hand-colored Prints (Kolb Brothers)

At the time a gentleman by the name of Fred Harvey was building a series of hotels and a tourist industry on the Santa Fe railway line out west. Along the same route that eventually would become Route 66, Fred Harvey spread his empire of graceful accommodation and service. At the Grand Canyon he would build a hotel the El Tovar on the rim (still there today). When Fred saw the Kolb brothers making money he decided to build a more prominent studio on the rim and signed exclusively the company the Kolb brothers used to make their photo albums. The Kolbs found another maker but there continued a series of attempts by Fred Harvey to drive the Kolbs out of business. Fred even arranged for the mule coral to block access to the studio. 

The River Trip

During this time Ellsworth concocted a plan to run the river just as John Wesley Powell had from Green River Wyoming. He talked his younger less enthusiastic brother into the venture. From a modern standpoint one can see all of the modern problems of running a photographic business over hundred years ago. Certainly the two of them were adventurous and energetic young men and so the adventure and romance must have been a tremendous draw. However, never far from their minds was promoting themselves and their business. They understood they they would be perhaps the 8th group to make this journey and that even Powell had taken photographs on his second journey as had others. They saw the need to do something different. 

The Kolbs promoted themselves just as modern photographers feel compelled to make use of Instagram and YouTube 

Motion pictures were becoming popular so the decided they would film their journey. This would give them another angle of promotion. They were dead right about this and it would form a great portion of their success. So they proceeded to spend the next 101 days traveling down the canyon. The story is well worth a read to anyone interested in the Grand Canyon. Having read John Wesley Powell’s account many years ago it is interesting to contrast what differences there were in the intervening 45 years. 

By the time the Kolbs traveled they could depend on meeting ranchers, prospectors, and outlaws along the way. They could mail letters and visit small towns and buy or barter for supplies.  Contrast this with Powell’s experience where he would not encounter another human for virtually all of the journey. 

Kolb Brothers on the river in Defiance Ellsworth's boat with Hubert Lauzon

The Kolbs energetically hauled their large format cameras along with film cameras and their movie camera. They acknowledge the improved ease of pre-sensitized dry plates compared to earlier wet plate techniques where the emulsion must be sensitized shortly before exposure. In any case they stopped most every day during the journey and erected their darkroom-tent and developed their plates and films. All of these had to be kept dry and safe. 

All the while they setup the tripod and run their heavy movie camera for each set of rapids or each scene they wished to record. 

Their travels were not without peril and required some amount of luck, but they were intrepid, adaptable and courageous. They ended their 101 days in Needles California. Ellsworth later returned to Needles to finish the journey to Mexico and the Gulf of California. A section of this trip my brother and I undertook on Thanksgiving in the early 1990s between Blythe and the Imperial dam by canoe. 

Promotion

On return from their journeys they set about promoting their business on the basis of the film and photos. They tried showing their film in their studio. By 1911 the US Government had taken an interest in the Canyon in what would eventually lead to it being made into a National Park. Fred Harvey managed to get the government to ban the showing of the film as he tried to restrict any commercial activity other than his own at the Canyon. Eventually another Harvey family member took over the business and understood how the Kolbs were helpful in driving tourists to the Canyon for everyone’s benefit. The Kolb expedition and photographs were also featured in the August 1914 issue of National Geographic.

The result of Fred Harvey’s actions was to cause the Kolbs to take their film on the road throughout the Eastern US to lecture and present the film to paying audiences. This was very successful though at one point some tense business arguments lead to the brothers splitting the business with Ellsworth selling the business to Emery who stay at the Grand Canyon until his death in 1976 at the age of 96. The movie played every day at the studio as I believe it still does today. 

Epilogue

While growing up in Flagstaff I recall going to someone’s house and watching a film where they had rafted the Grand Canyon with the aim of retracing the same film clips and photos to see what had changed. My family moved to Flagstaff in 1969 so I most certainly had been to the Canyon while Emery Kolb was still alive and the Kolb studio was as much a part of the Grand Canyon tourist experience as the El Tovar hotel, the Park Museum, Indian dances, the mule rides and the traffic and lookouts. 

A number of years ago my wife and I spent a coupe of days at the south rim and it has lost none of its wonder for me despite having lived so close all those years.