"The Wild Bunch" was photographed John Swartz's Fort Worth studio in 1900. Harry Longbaugh ("Sundance Kid") is seated at left, and Robert Leroy Parker ("Butch Cassidy") is seated at right.
“The Swartz Brothers: Fort Worth’s First Family of Photographers” is the title of a current exhibition at Mary Couts Barnett Library from now until Nov. 30.
The siblings—David, John and Charles—arrived in Fort Worth in the mid-1880s. Over the next 33 years, they observed the city through the lens of a camera, snapping thousands of pictures of people, events and architecture.
Hundreds of those images have survived, although the brothers are largely forgotten. Their best-known photograph shows the five members of the “Wild Bunch” posed in John’s studio in November 1900.
The exhibit, assembled by historian Richard F. Selcer and genealogist Donna Donnell, highlights 46 examples of the brothers’ work.
Sponsors of these events are Friends of the TCU Library, the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the Fort Worth Promotion and Development Fund, Scott Barker and others who contributed funding and photographs.
