Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 85

Price Realized: $ 281
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(GEORGE A. CUSTER.) Frank Purcell; photographer. Haunting double-exposure taken at the Little Big Horn battlefield. Silver print, 4 x 3 3/4 inches, on photographer's mount with extended caption on verso, also bearing 1924 inscription and partial label from Rixon's Pharmacy in Billings, MT; minor wear. Billings, MT, 1897 image
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Additional Details

Purcell was on the scene to shoot at a Decoration Day ceremony at Little Big Horn in 1897. The main view is of the monuments to Custer's fallen men. Faintly superimposed is an image from a Crow war dance which was staged at the commemoration, showing a man named Bloody Knife with his knife raised high--looking much like a ghost delivering Custer's final death blow. Purcell's lengthy explanation on verso attributes the juxtaposition to "some red prophet of the long ago invoking the great spirit's vengeance for centuries of wrong."