Mary Tyson, Director of the Center for Regional History
A wolf sighting is truly exciting. Most of the time it’s from a long distance away. Our appreciation of their magnificence is often from close-up photos. Contemporary nature photographers are like hunters except with a camera. Predicting where the animal or bird will be and when takes great knowledge. And then, the sought after shot is captured with skill, a powerful lens, and some luck.
Well before the turn of the 20th Century, a local mining assayer, Eugene Antz, took this photograph of a wolf. Unlike the far distance that today’s zoom lens would allow, Antz had to be quite close. He was able to get near to this wolf because, sadly, he was documenting a trapped animal. From the 1880s on, so many new settlers in the West were eradicating wolves by trapping them. By about 1950 there were very few in these mountains. The wolf was declared endangered in 1974 under the Endangered Species Act and reintroduction began in 1995 and 1996.
Antz had a photography studio business in Ketchum and in Bayhorse before that. Many of his photographs serve as documentation of what was happening in our region. It seems likely that he carried his camera and equipment with him either walking with mules or on horseback. For some of his prints, he used the wet colloidal technique.
To create the image, he had to bring along with him a portable darkroom in which he could immediately process and make a print.
Note this story was originally published in May of 2024 in the Idaho Mountain Express.
