By Robert Spude
Among the collections at the Sharlot Hall Museum is a finely crafted, wooden box. Inside, slid between wooden tracks, stand the glass plate negatives of Clarence H. Shaw, a photographer of Arizona during the 1890s and early 1900s.
The glass plates reveal his skill in the craft for they depict not just people, but character, not just place, but mood. He captured events not commonly frozen behind the ground glass of other territorial photographers. His glass plate negatives are a treasure to view.
Glass plate negatives, or "dry plates," were used before the adoption of film negatives for photography. The plates were bulky and broke easily. That they survive to this day is a wonder, since Shaw and his pack mule ranged from the Salt River Valley north along the Arizona/Utah border.
Shaw was a slender, bearded lanky individual, and like so many tubercular victims of the time, moved from Chicago to Phoenix as per his doctor's orders. While in Phoenix, he opened a photo studio on First Avenue. On the side, he sold curios and other collectibles bought from Maricopa and other American Indians. An advertisement mentioned that he was also an "antiquarian."
In the Sharlot Hall Museum collection of his prints are photographs of Maricopa women selling their pottery or filling ollas. Shaw visited the Yaqui, Pima, and Maricopa and photographed them at school and in their homes.
His images show sensitivity toward Arizona's varied cultures. His photographs of the Native Americans he met on the streets of Phoenix and, especially, the Havasupai in the Grand Canyon reveal much about these people's early years on reservations. He also photographed Chinese and Mexican-Americans, and, of course, the Anglos of the frontier such as cowboys, farmers, and merchants.
His street scenes of early Salt River Valley towns - Phoenix, Glendale, Mesa, and Tempe - capture them in their Victorian architectural splendor. Bicycles and horse-drawn vehicles dominate the dirt streets. Shaw also photographed the surrounding desert, now vanished under suburbia. Canals and water systems were also recorded on glass.
The photographs of the Grand Canyon are most intriguing. His photographs show that he traveled north to Pipe Springs, near the Utah border, to the south rim and down to Havasupai Falls. He took landscape photographs, as well as scenes of early tourist developments. There is a classic shot of Shaw in his camp, often mistaken for Buckey O'Neill.
The pictures he produced were good enough that Sharlot Hall used them in her articles published in Out West magazine, an early competitor to Sunset. His photographs were used for articles on the Grand Canyon, Phoenix, Williams, and Arizona’s Native American cultures. Since Hall was assistant editor of the magazine, she also used his prints as filler in the magazine's pages.
Shaw died around 1905. Sharlot Hall acquired Shaw’s glass plates, which are now carefully preserved at the museum she started on Gurley Street.
The following images are from glass plate negatives that show the beauty of Clarence H. Shaw's work at the turn of the century in Arizona.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(ra151pf)
Reuse only by permission.
Charence Shaw's turn of the century bronc busting, c 1900.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pa134p)
Reuse only by permission.
Chinese Parade, Phoenix, c. 1900.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(inn806pb)
Reuse only by permission.
Navajo Men Gambling, c. 1900