05/02/2025
Montana's Old West photographer L.A. HUFFMAN has been the subject of five books. The essay below discusses his vintage prints, how to distinguish them from reproductions, and market valuation. Some history of photography is also revealed. I hope that people with interest will share their insights or ask questions. -Gary Coffrin
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- Huffman “Originals” versus Reproductions -
Miles City’s renowned Old West photographer, Laton Alton Huffman, has been the subject of five books. This essay discusses his vintage prints, how to distinguish them from reproductions, and market valuation. Some history of photography is also revealed. I hope that readers with additional information will contact me.
L.A. Huffman arrived at Fort Keogh, adjacent to Miles City, in December 1879 (not 1878, as Huffman had claimed), three years after Custer's defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Photography was limited to a small population of professionals. Huffman's earliest views were captured with a stereoscopic camera using fragile glass-plate negatives. The plates required coatings with noxious chemicals, taking the photo before the plate dried, and immediately bathing the plate in chemicals in a dark environment after the shot. In 1881, Huffman switched to dry glass-plates for his field photography. The dry plates were ready to load without preparation. Moreover, the dry plates were more sensitive to light than the wet collodion emulsions, allowing quicker shutter speeds that captured images with less blur from motion.
L.A. Huffman’s photos provided the country’s best documentation of the working life of early cowboys on the open range before the use of barbed wire. His portraits of Native Americans rank among the nation’s best of the era, and include the first portraits of important chiefs after Custer’s defeat. Huffman’s photographs of buffalo hunters at work and of the arrival of the railroad have historical importance. L.A. Huffman was perhaps the only person to establish a national reputation while living in Miles City, Montana.
Distinction #1: Photographs versus Output From A Printing Press.
In traditional photography, there is ONE original: The Negative. From that, multiple photographic prints can be made in a photographer’s darkroom. Photographs made by Huffman or under his direction can be better described as VINTAGE PRINTS than as originals. To my knowledge, prior to 1905 Huffman made only contact prints that were the same size as his negatives, 6x8 inches at the largest.
L.A. Huffman outsourced postcards and various reproductions of photos. The collotype reproductions, printed in various sizes, eliminated the darkroom time required to produce each individual print, and reduced Huffman’s costs.
Huffman’s price lists did not distinguish between collotype reproductions and prints made individually in a darkroom. The best collotypes can require examination under magnification to confirm their origin from a printing press. Photographs have continuous tones, while collotypes will have patterned networks of lines and small areas where inking is not continuous. In the collector market, real photographs attract prices that are two to five times as high. Some collotypes were much larger than the photographic prints Huffman likely could have made in his own darkroom.
Miles City photographer Jack Coffrin, like Huffman before him, outsourced printed items: postcards, notecards, and color reproductions of Huffman photos. Huffman’s outsourced items were printed in black and white, although some were hand-tinted. All of the Coffrin outsourced items were printed in color. The two dozen Coffrin postcards displayed good detail, but color balance was often poor.
The large color reproductions outsourced by Coffrin have caused confusion in the consumer market. The source images were large photographic prints, hand-colored in Coffrin’s studio. Color separations were made to produce the printer’s plates. Montana-based Treasure Products printed most reproductions, usually with an image area of 11x14 inches. Detail, colors, and registration were mediocre. The reproductions lacked the continuous tones of a real photograph, making them easy to distinguish from hand-colored photos when viewed in person.
The color reproductions, which often have TP in the title area, have typically sold for about $15 on eBay, although some have sold for more and some listings have closed without selling. Buyer beware! Sellers on eBay and elsewhere frequently provide false or inadequate descriptions that fail to identify these as reproductions from a commercial printer. I noticed a reproduction in a Miles City market priced at more than $300. A Coffrin hand-colored photograph might be worth 25 to 80 times the value of a color reproduction, depending on size, condition, and subject.
Distinction #2: Huffman Photos versus Photos Produced by Coffrin.
Jack Coffrin was unaware of L.A. Huffman until the winter of 1950-51. Coffrin was visited by W.R. Felton, Huffman’s son-in-law who had arrived in Montana during 1906 as a survey engineer for the Milwaukee Railroad, and historian Mark Brown. Coffrin Studio was at 711 ½ Main Street in a building known as the Miles Block. Felton and Brown engaged Coffrin to develop several hundred prints from Huffman negatives. Of these, 250 were used as artwork for "The Frontier Years" (1955) and "Before Barbed Wire" (1956). The books rekindled a national awareness of Huffman. The volumes by Felton and Brown are usually available on Amazon or Abebooks at affordable prices, and provide great history of Eastern Montana.
Various Huffman images had been published in books and national magazines during Huffman’s lifetime, and Huffman sold many prints by mail order. Three more recent books have presented examples from the vintage print collection of Gene and Bev Allen. Research by the Allens has provided new insights into the Huffman legacy, and corrected many of the earlier-than-actual dates Huffman had listed on his photos.
Huffman sometimes altered images by retouching negatives. In a few outdoor views, objects or persons were removed. With his early portraits of Native Americans, Huffman often replaced busy studio backdrops with an unpatterned tone. Huffman added clouds to some of his collotype reproductions, and his hand-tinted prints sometimes featured stunningly colorful skylines.
After L.A. Huffman's death in 1931, his daughter, Ruth Scott, and her husband Vernon moved into the Huffman residence at 510 Garland Street in Miles City. They continued selling old inventory. Jack Coffrin made small quantities of prints for the Scotts. Starting in 1953, fluorescent dyes were added as brighteners to some, but not all, USA photographic papers. Examination under a blacklight provides one indicator of when a photo was produced.
In 1957, Jack Coffrin constructed a new business location at 1600 Main Street. Ruth Scott’s husband died in 1964. That year, Coffrin moved the entire collection of Huffman glass-plate negatives from the Scott residence to his own facility. New prints were produced under a licensing agreement, and Coffrin Studio became the sales agent for Huffman’s older prints. New prints were stamped "Coffrin Studio" on the back. Coffrin had excellent darkroom technique, and like Huffman before him, he did not do aggressive dodging (lightening) or burning (darkening) to areas of the prints. The early Coffrin prints, superbly made with Huffman’s original glass-plates, used newer papers.
In 1966, Coffrin built a front addition to provide more display room for Huffman images. In August 1967, Coffrin hired Al Turnquist to accelerate the business transition to an exclusive focus on Huffman images. Turnquist created color separations for the commercial printing of several color postcards. Additionally, he helped Coffrin produce film copy negatives of Huffman’s fragile and historically important glass-plate negatives. In January 1969, Al Turnquist took over the portrait business from Coffrin, but continued to help with Coffrin’s darkroom work. By 1969 or a bit earlier, the business name was changed from Coffrin Studio to Coffrin’s Old West Gallery. The stamp on the rear of a photo and its listed address can help date the print.
Distinction #3: Photographs Printed From Original Negatives versus Copy Negatives.
A copy negative produces photos with a slight loss of sharpness and a slight loss of detail, particularly in the darkest regions. However, prints made in a photographer’s darkroom from copy negatives can sometimes be so good that only a side-by-side comparison will reveal with certainty which print was made from a copy negative and which from the original.
Coffrin retouched copy negatives to remove some of the blemishes of the glass-plates, since many of Huffman’s plates had suffered significant wear from 40+ years of production usage. Coffrin kept the delicate glass-plates in protective storage. Jack Coffrin also added clouds to many of the copy negatives of outdoor views. He felt that clouds enhanced sales appeal without altering the appearance of persons or objects of historical interest. If clouds can be clearly seen, the Coffrin print was made from a copy negative. (The coatings on early glass-plate negatives registered the blue sky and white clouds at the same tonal value, so no clouds were seen in early photos.)
All or nearly all black and white Huffman photos with the Coffrin Studio stamp were produced with Huffman’s original glass-plate negatives, and these will have the highest collector value of Coffrin prints. The vast majority of photographic prints with the Coffrin's Old West Gallery stamp, and certainly all with clouds in the sky, were produced with copy negatives.
At the end of 1980, Jack and Vivian Coffrin sold Coffrin’s Old West Gallery to the Hal and Loni Ross family. In 1991, Frank Ross purchased the inventory from his nephew Hal, and began business under the Coffrin’s Old West Gallery name in Bozeman, Montana. At some point, Frank Ross used an outside service provider to produce medium-resolution scans of the copy negatives that Jack Coffrin had produced in the late 1960s. Prints would no longer be individually developed in a photographer’s darkroom, but would be produced by a printer from digital scans. In early 2012, Frank Ross sold digital scan files and some of his inventory to Harvey Whipps of Miles City. Prints made from digital scans lack appeal in the collector market.
The last significant quantities of photographs made from Huffman's ORIGINAL negatives in a photographer’s darkroom were produced by Jack Coffrin under the Coffrin Studio name. These prints had slightly better sharpness than later prints made from copy negatives under the Coffrin’s Old West Gallery name.
Upon selling his business, Jack Coffrin returned the original negatives to the Huffman estate. In 1982, they were donated to the Montana Historical Society. One set of copy negatives was sold with the business, and I, Gary Coffrin, own the other set.
Distinction #4: Hand Colored Photos by Huffman versus Coffrin.
Before color film dominated, portrait studios had colorists who painted black and white photographic prints. Huffman sold photos that were hand-tinted, some with oil and some with watercolors. Some were tinted in-house and some by contractors paid a fixed price per piece. Quality varied widely. The Huffman hand-tinted photos are rare, valuable, and the best are stunning.
Jack Coffrin sold photographs that were hand colored in-house, using oil-paints exclusively. Depending on size, the process could take several days. The colored photos were expensive in their day, and value remains high. Lynn Kron and the other trained colorists that Jack Coffrin employed in Miles City produced consistently excellent prints.
Regarding Value.
1) Please read carefully the comments under Distinction #1 regarding color reproductions made by a printing press. The information can help buyers from making costly blunders.
2) Keep in mind that in traditional photography there is ONE original negative. That one negative can produce many photographic prints. Mark Browning, founding director of the WaterWorks Art Museum, noted: “Coffrin Studio photos will never be as old or as valuable as Huffman’s own.” Still, there are quality and value distinctions among the photos produced under the Coffrin name. Coffrin’s hand-colored prints attract prices that are multiples higher than black and white prints. Photographs from Coffrin Studio were almost certainly produced with Huffman’s glass plates, were not produced in large numbers, and therefore should have the highest worth. Prints labeled with Coffrin’s Old West Gallery and the 1600 Main Street address were more numerous and were almost certainly produced with copy negatives. Therefore, value will likely be less.
Coffrin’s Old West Gallery prints sold with the Bozeman address, particularly those made from digital scans, should have less worth. Prints made since 2012 by Whipps Welawiben Custom Framing & Collectible Art in Miles City were produced from digital scans, but Whipps’ business obtained some older inventory from Frank Ross of Bozeman. Purchases of the digital prints should be made for personal satisfaction, and that’s a good reason. However, there is presently no collector interest in these.
Digital Prints in the Future.
Many prints made in a photographer’s darkroom have survived more than 150 years. However, digital prints produced with dye inks, a colored solution, have often faded quickly from sunlight. Prints made with pigment inks, fine particles in a liquid suspension, should last longer. Giclee prints, digital prints using pigment inks on acid-free archival papers, should last the longest.
Future collector interest in digital prints will likely depend on these factors:
a) Provenance of a digital print. A scan of the original negative, the one true original in traditional photography, will reveal the most detail and provide the greatest range of luminosity. If the original negative was not used, how far removed was the source? A scan of a copy negative? Or, least desirable, a scan of a photographic print of undocumented origin?
L.A. Huffman’s magic was fully captured on his negatives. He did not use, and did not need, sophisticated darkroom techniques to produce stunning prints. Huffman was a photojournalist and marketer by temperament; he wanted to capture views that would sell to a national audience. The wonder and uniqueness of Huffman’s captures were in the subject matter and its framing, his inclination to take action shots when shutter speeds were slow, and his photographs of unposed subjects who were sometimes not even facing the camera. His darkroom technique was consistently orthodox. Moreover, it is unclear if Huffman ever owned an enlarger, or if he used outside labs for photographic prints larger that 6x8 inches. Unlike Edward Curtis or Ansel Adams, Huffman never created highly-stylized art prints in the darkroom, although vintage prints reveal that he occasionally cropped his views.
b) Quality of the scan. At least 300 pixels per inch are needed for quality prints. Therefore, a 30-inch print requires a scan with at least 9,000 pixels on the longer dimension. The scanner used, operator skill, and file format (48-bit RGB TIF files are best) determine scan quality. Finally, the skill, care, and aesthetic inclinations of the person doing post-scanning cleanup and image adjustments in Photoshop or other image editing software will be important.
c) Print type. Giclee prints (pigment inks, archival papers) will likely have the highest interest from collectors. However, improvements in longevity of dye inks are occurring. Dye inks can produce stunning prints on platinum and other premium papers having some gloss. Glass, particularly museum glass, increases print longevity by protecting against UV light and ozone.
Currently (2020), no seller of Huffman images offers giclee prints based on high resolution scans of at least 12,000 pixels on the longer dimension. Producing an initial gallery-quality print of a Huffman image with my equipment can require 10 or more hours of work in Photoshop to clean, sharpen, and tonally balance for optimum clarity, plus the costs and added time of producing test prints and making final tweaks. Because I lack a commercial platform to sell additional prints after the first, which require only the time to print and mount, I seldom perform large file restorations. Instead, I have been posting small file restorations on Facebook, which require much less time in Photoshop.
If you have questions or additional information, please contact me at [email protected] or via Facebook Messenger.
-Gary Coffrin, son of Orrin Jack Coffrin, Miles City photographer from 1950 through 1980.
