Michael Lehr Antiques
Live Auction

Fall Photographic History Auction, 2025

Sat, Sep 6, 2025 01:00PM EDT
  2025-09-06 13:00:00 2025-09-06 13:00:00 America/New_York Michael Lehr Michael Lehr : Fall Photographic History Auction, 2025 https://auction.michaellehrantiques.com/auctions/michael-lehr-antiques/fall-photographic-history-auction-2025-20189
We are pleased to announce our next auction, featuring approximately 200 individual lots drawn from a diverse and compelling range of 19th- and early 20th-century photography. This sale focuses on vernacular images, photographs created not as formal studio portraits or elite commissions, but as direct, unscripted records of lived experience. These are objects made by and for everyday people, preserving moments of intimacy, labor, travel, performance, identity, and loss.
Michael Lehr Antiques info@michaellehrantiques.com
Lot 276

Cabinet Card Rain in the Face by L. W. Stilwell, Deadwood, S. D.

Estimate: $600 - $800
Starting Bid
$300

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Striking late 19th-century cabinet card portrait of the Hunkpapa Lakota war leader Rain in the Face, photographed by L.W. Stilwell of Deadwood, South Dakota. Identified in the image by a faint printed caption, the sitter appears seated in a studio setting wearing a bone breastplate, fur pelts, and a feathered headband, conveying both dignity and defiance. Rain in the Face was a prominent figure during the Indian Wars and is widely remembered for his role in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, where he was alleged, though he denied, to have killed and mutilated Captain Thomas Custer. The verso advertises “Indian Relics; Sioux, Apache, Etc.” and offers an extensive selection of ancient stone tools, minerals, and fossils, indicative of the era's commercial fascination with Native cultures. Stilwell, active in the Black Hills region in the 1880s and 1890s, was one of several frontier photographers who documented Native leaders in the wake of the Plains Wars. Portraits of Rain in the Face are scarce and highly sought after, especially those made during his later years when his image had become emblematic of the resistance to westward expansion.

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