Fred Hultstrand (September 13, 1888 – June 28, 1968) was a professional photographer. His photography helped document life in North Dakota in the early twentieth century.
Hultstrand was born on a farm in Fairdale, North Dakota to Swedish immigrants, the third of six children. He attended school in Osnabrock, North Dakota with only knowledge of his native tongue. In 1905, Hultstrand witnessed his neighbor developing negatives in the basement of his home and was fascinated. In 1909, he paid to be an apprentice to a photographer in Milton, North Dakota named John McCarthy. He went to Wallace, Idaho to photograph lead and zinc mines.
The next year, he went to study his art at the Illinois College of Photography in Effingham. After studying there for two years, he continued his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. He made his way back to North Dakota where he would spend the rest of his life.
On November 14, 1917, Hultstrand married Eva Baker, an immigrant from Canada with whom he would have two children. He purchased the photography studio in which he would work for the rest of his days in Park River, North Dakota. There, he offered portrait photographs, as well as film development and framing services. He would also work on the photographs that documented rural farm life in North Dakota in that era.
In 1962, the United States Department of the Treasury used one of the photographs that Hultstrad had collected as a basis for a stamp that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Homestead Act. It featured a family standing outside of their sod house near the town of Milton. The government of Norway issued a stamp celebrating the 150th anniversery of Norwegian emigration to the United States, using the same photograph. Hultstrand died at age seventy-nine in 1968.
References
- The Library of Congress. The Northern Great Plains: Fred Hultstrand, Biography. Accessed on June 18, 2005.
- North Dakota State University. Pioneer Camera. Accessed on June 18, 2005.
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