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June 1977
Volume28Issue4
We don’t suppose there has ever been such a thing as a “Best Chicken Photograph” contest—although in a country as dedicatedly contest-minded as these United States it would not come as much of a surprise. In any case, there is little doubt in our minds that the picture above would win such a competition with little or no difficulty. Ulrich Bourgeois was the photographer, obviously a master of his craft, a man to make all other chicken photographers cringe with envy.
We don’t suppose there has ever been such a thing as a “Best Chicken Photograph” contest—although in a country as dedicatedly contest-minded as these United States it would not come as much of a surprise. In any case, there is little doubt in our minds that the picture above would win such a competition with little or no difficulty. Ulrich Bourgeois was the photographer, obviously a master of his craft, a man to make all other chicken photographers cringe with envy. The picture was taken in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1901, and was but one of many that Bourgeois produced for the postcard division of the John D. Varick Company of Boston. The pudgy rascal in the wagon, apparently getting ready to goad the rooster into mobility, is little John Cartier, a member of one of the many French-Canadian familes that had settled in Manchester. About the rooster himself we know next to nothing—except that he was a really big bird, obviously a pet, and the pride, so we are told, of the Cartier family. Well, why not? Perhaps they couldn’t afford a goat.