I would like to introduce you to T. J. Hileman. He was a well known photographer of the West, particularly Glacier National Park and Native Americans. There is a bit of confusion about exactly where in the family tree he is located due to things common to old records like similar names and differing dates. He likely is a sibling to my fourth generation grandfather and named after his grandfather. But suffice it to see him about 4 generations back. He was born in 1882 and moved west in 1911, to Kalispell, Montana after completing studies at Effingham School of Photography in Chicago. He opened a studio there and this photograph is of his studio or at least one of them, I do not know if he had more than one location over the years but this one would have been about the time he was photographing Glacier for the Northern Pacific Railroad. I love the logo he created and this same stylized format of Hileman is found on his prints as well.
It is striking to think of him shooting images using a huge format camera and pack horses while I roll up in air conditioned comfort walk a few hundred feet or a short trail and take lots of images it the time it would take for him to unlimber his large wooden tripod. But we share an interest in the photographs of our National Parks.
