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Otis A. Aultman |
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1874-1943 |
Otis A Aultman, photographer, was born on August 27, 1874, in
Holden, Missouri. His family moved to Trinidad, Colorado, in
1888. As a young man he learned photography from his older
brother, Oliver, many of whose photographs of the Trinidad area
are now in the collections of the Colorado State Historical
Society. Aultman married and had two children, but the marriage
ended in permanent separation in 1908, after which he moved to
El Paso. There he first worked for Scott Photo Company, was
later in partnership with Robert Dorman, and eventually owned
his own studio. |
By 1911 El Paso was a gathering place for many of the main
personalities of the Mexican Revolution (Francisco Madero,
Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Pascual Orozcoq) and after the
shooting began, many American newsmen also flocked to El Paso to
cover the event. Aultman was a man in the right place at the
right time. He photographed the battle of Casas Grandes, the
first battle of Juárez in May 1911, and the Orozco rebellion in
1912. He was a favorite of Pancho Villa, who called Aultman "Banty
Rooster" because he was only 5'4" tall. Aultman worked for the
International News Service and Pathé News and experimented with
cinematography. In 1916 he was one of the first photographers to
arrive at Columbus, New Mexico, after the famous raid on that
town by the Villistas.
During the early years of the revolution Aultman's studio on San
Francisco Street was a gathering place for both local and
out-of-town reporters and photographers, as well as soldiers of
fortune. A group called the Adventurer's Club, of which Aultman
was a founding member, was formed during this period and
continued to meet sporadically for many years, reportedly
whenever two or more members were in town.
After the military part of the revolution was over, Aultman
settled down to a conventional career as a commercial
photographer. He took an interest in photographs depicting early
El Paso history and collected many from the 1880s and 1890s.
Another of his interests was archaeology; early photographs of
archeological sites in the El Paso area are an important part of
his work, and he was a founding member of the El Paso
Archaeology Society.
Aultman died from a fall in his studio in 1943. Subsequently,
the El Paso Chamber of Commerce purchased his negatives from the
estate. Over the next twenty years the negatives were moved from
one storage place to another, and undoubtedly some disappeared.
In the 1960s, due largely to the interest of historian C. L.
Sonnichsen, the remaining 6,000 negatives were purchased,
prints were made, and both negatives and prints were placed in
the El Paso Public Library. A second set of prints is in the
Library of the University of Texas at El Paso. Aultman's
photographs are a priceless contribution to the recorded history
of El Paso, southern New Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez. Equally
important are his photos of the early stages of the Mexican
revolution.
Mary A. Sarber
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Bibliography: Larry A. Harris, Pancho Villa and the Columbus
Raid (El Paso: McMath, 1949). Mary A. Sarber, Photographs from
the Border: The Otis A. Aultman Collection (El Paso Public
Library Association, 1977) |
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