The Aultman Studio

Trinidad has more than 100 years of its history preserved in photographs made by the father-son camera artists Oliver and Glenn Aultman, assisted by Jennie Aultman, whose work captured changing street scenes, celebrations, historic events, and the diverse faces of Trinidad’s polyglot population, including Native Americans in war bonnets, Asian miners, Italian immigrants, Hispanic cowboys in fleece chaps, and many other races, ethnic groups, and cultures. The Aultman Studio began in 1889 when Oliver, a bank loan officer with no knowledge of photography, took over a studio to prevent default on a loan he had made to a photographer who left town, and he proved to be a natural camera artist, as did his son Glenn, born in 1905. Originally located four blocks west, the studio moved in 1901 to the second floor of the stone Romanesque two-story Plested Building across the street. In 1990, the First National Bank incorporated and remodeled the building while preserving the Aultman Studio, and the Aultman Museum of Photography, farther east in the same block on the mezzanine level of the A. R. Mitchell Memorial Museum of Western Art, displays the award-winning “Faces of Trinidad” exhibit and an illustrated timeline history of photography.

Trinidad, Colorado · United States