William S. Soule

Biography

William S. Soule trained as a photographer and found his calling recording the Western frontier for the U.S. Army, documenting regimental life, Indigenous peoples, and landscapes with an unflinching eye. His glass-plate negatives captured a fleeting moment of American history and conveyed the dignity of his subjects.

He later preserved and shared his vast archive, ensuring that museums and scholars could use the images to study an era of tremendous change; those photographs continue to serve as invaluable windows into the late 19th century.