While looking through an antique store in Tombstone, I came across a copy of  I Married Wyatt Earp and asked about the image on its cover. The dealer said the image was thought to be Josie Earp at one point, but it's definitely not her, it was just a tall tale.

A few months earlier, in the latest of a trail of "high dollar"sales, this same image had sold for thousands at auction, due to the purported tie to Josie Earp.

For years, heated discussions in meetings, over beers, and on the web have argued the accuracy of the attribution. Researchers, dealers, and collectors vary in their opinions. Rival camps have formed, each with clear impressions about the accuracy, or lack thereof, depending on your beliefs and alliances.

Rather than weigh into the controversy from an emotional slant, I thought it would be helpful to step back and take a look at the facts and details of what we know, and what we don't know about the background of this legendary image.

During the 1960s, the image of Kaloma surfaced again as a nostalgic icon, a vintage romantically risqué image. One of the great rock poster designers of the time, Alton Kelley with Family Dog Productions in Haight Ashbury, made Kaloma the centerpiece of his classic concert poster for Vanilla Fudge and The Charles Lloyd Quartet at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco September 29 - October 1, 1967. Kaloma was also popular as reprints of the original image were marketed, and Kelley's poster became popular as a "hippie" wall decor for years afterward.

The relatively benign history of Kaloma changed significantly in 1976 when Glenn Boyer used an airbrushed version of Kaloma as the cover illustration for I Married Wyatt Earp, published by the University of Arizona Press. Gradually, interest in the image began to shift from risqué nostalgia. Kaloma became an icon of the mania for western collecting that grew through the 1980s and escalated dramatically in the late 1990s.

Almost entirely as a result of the book cover attribution, copies of the Kaloma image began to sell for hundreds, then thousands of dollars as portraits of Josephine Marcus Earp.

Questions about the historical accuracy of I Married Wyatt Earp, and the attribution of the cover photograph of Kaloma, began to arise by the mid-1990s. The debate about the cover image escalated, reaching the popular press in the late 1990s. Donald Ackerman wrote the Maine Antique Digest in April 1997 requesting assistance in verifying the attribution of the Kaloma image as Josie Earp. He noted that the image had realized $2750 at H. C. A. Auctions in Burlington, North Carolina in a December 6 1996 sale. Ackerman notes the similarity to the early silent film publicity stills that he was familiar with and questions the attribution to the 1880s and the strength of the purported link to Josie Earp. He further notes that the sale price would likely draw more copies into the marketplace, and that additional copies of the Kaloma image were being offered by H.C. A Auctions in their April 27, 1997 sale and an auction house in Kingston, New York on May 28.

-Josephine Earp was born in 1861 and would have been 53 in 1914. Conveniently after this fact became an issue, Kaloma began to be described as a later print of an image of Josie taken in Tombstone in 1881 when she would have been 19 or 20 - roughly the same age as the subject of Kaloma.

-At some point purported ties to C. S. Fly began to surface as the original photographer of a drunken Josie coerced into posing for the portrait.

-Legends of attribution prospered. Quotes from many sources have been touted as the definitive word on the history of the image. Unsupported tales of bar owners or those in attendance when the image was supposedly made have been used to rationalize the Kaloma image as a portrait of Josie Earp.

-Similarities with other, better-attributed images of Josie Earp have been cited but little provenance has been given to tie any of the Kaloma images to Josie Earp.

-Citations in auction catalogs and from dealer sales, all after the 1976 publication of I Married Wyatt Earp, are regularly used to "verify" that Kaloma is Josie Earp.

Unfortunately little concrete evidence has been found to help settle the controversy. Where is evidence of the tie from before publication of Boyer's book in 1976? Also, where are the primary source citations from the period between Josie's time in Tombstone, and the emergence of Kaloma in 1914 that link the image to the personality?

Recently a heated debate has again emerged about who is the real subject of the Kaloma image, and how much stock to put into the attribution that it may be Josie Earp. Let's start with the evidence that we have about the image known as Kaloma, and try to logically determine the stories that it tells.

Evidence - objective, factual, documentary information provided by the photograph or its context (e.g. format, content within the photograph, attribution to photographic studio based on imprint or printed identification from the period, etc.)

Interpretation -building on circumstantial evidence and context that can be clearly verified to and by others (e.g. dating from format or image content, verification of period or more recent written identification, comparison with other known images, etc.)

Speculation -"Leaps of Faith" based on attribution by later generations, hearsay creative interpretation or desire.

Interpretation based on the format of the photograph or information within the image, such as building signs, can help verify or refute written identification that may have been added to the mount. All written information associated with an image should be confirmed, particularly if it was added after the image was originally produced. Well-intentioned family members, collectors and museum staff often add attributions to the photographs that pass through their hands. Their impressions or knowledge, and the accuracy of the written information, should be verified before it is assumed to be correct.

Speculation may be based on interpretation of available evidence, on emotional reaction to a photograph, or desire to "trim"a piece of the puzzle of history to make it fit. Speculation can be benign or unintentional when it is based on little knowledge or incorrect information. Personal desire or a potentially escalating image market can also drive speculative interpretations. For example, a tintype photo showing a young man in a bowler hat is found in an old family album. A quick search locates photos of young Butch Cassidy in a bowler hat from this era. If there is some similarity to build and facial features, an uninformed or unscrupulous seller could conclude that the tintype is of Butch Cassidy and promote the photograph as a new unknown Butch Cassidy image.

Every photographic identification is only as accurate as the weakest link in the information about the image available at a given time. Anecdotes and speculation make great stories but are merely weak links in accurately identifying a photograph.

Unfortunately, once incorrect information becomes widely available through print or the web, it can be extremely difficult to rein in the error and replace it with correct information. For many years the Smithsonian recommended cleaning daguerreotypes with thyrea, a chemical found in silver cleaner. In the 1980s research showed that thyrea damaged the plate and should not be used. Many collectors and antique dealers still find old references by sources highly credible when originally published, and use thyrea to clean and damage their valuable images. The image of Kaloma has taken on a life of her own through Boyer's book cover and the trail of auction catalog descriptions that built upon his attribution.

Images of towns or events often include building signage or other information that simplifies identification. Questions about the date and location of unattributed images of family members or unknown individuals are common in photographic research and genealogy. Unfortunately, portraits rarely include such helpful clues, making identifying anonymous portraits extremely difficult.

Many individuals share common facial features, and even radically different faces can look similar when viewed from certain angles. For this reason, most museum staff, knowledgeable researchers and collectors require provenance or history about the image to support physical similarities that might exist. Rarely will they weigh in with tentative identifications of new or unique images of famous people based only on visual similarities with other known images. Tentative identification of images thought to be Emily Dickinson, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesse James based on perceived similarities are among many that are currently being disputed by museums and collectors, and in the press.

Looking at context and dating clues in the photograph is a good start at going beyond perceived physical similarities. Most of the early Kaloma images seen to date are photogravures. These high quality reproductions from photographs were produced from engraving plates on a printing press, and were much less costly for publication runs than actual photographs. Photogravures were often printed with title and publication data below the image and were commonly used to create many copies of high quality illustrations for books, postcards and art magazines. Though photogravures had been used since the 1850s, their surge in popularity was between 1890 and 1920.

Copyright notifications have been printed on photograph mounts and occasionally in the image area since the 1850s. Notices were occasionally printed or etched in the negative, or later added to the surface of the print with a rubber stamp (C. S. Fly used stamped copyright notifications on many of his images of General George Crook and the surrender of Crook and Geronimo). Though copying and piracy were common, pirates rarely included previous notices when illegally reproduced. The Kaloma images seen to date have all been associated with copyright notices dating from after 1914. The photograph on the sheet music is unattributed, though the music is copyrighted to Cosmopolitan Publishing Company.

Risqué photographs like the Kaloma image have been made and sold since the 1840s. These images rarely included photographer's credits or copyright notices. Also, the subjects of such "art"photographs were not usually identified. It is highly unlikely that even if the subject of Kaloma had been identified at some point, such documentation by photographer or publisher would still exist. However, given the heated levels of discussion about the current attributions, and possible liability given Kaloma's high recent sales prices, it is not likely that publishers or distributors will actively take sides in this matter. Obviously locating documentation of the sitter of the Kaloma image will be key to unraveling the controversy about this image.

During much of their lives, the Earps were popular, widely known, public personalities. Though few commercial portraits of the Earps exist, if images were available at the time it is likely that they would have had a large and ready market. Prints were relatively affordable with individual cabinet card portraits costing about $1.25 per dozen, and group portraits slightly more expensive at about $1.50 per dozen.

The C. S. Fly studio in Tombstone was known for its marketing. Thousands of copies of images of the surrender of Geronimo were printed and sold.  Similarly, portraits of personalities visiting Tombstone, and photographs of local events like the hanging of John Heath, were broadly distributed. If as speculated, Fly took a salable image of Josie Earp, it is highly unlikely that he would not have capitalized on the opportunity to sell copies. To date, no copies of the Kaloma image have been located on Fly studio mounts.

Photographic styles changed regularly every few years as photographers sought to justify new portrait business, and as lenses, formats and emulsions continually evolved. By looking at large numbers of images it is possible to get a feel for the photographic style from a given era. Images that don't fit the norm exist, and are often highly valued by collectors as precursors of future styles and trends. However, it is safe to say that most images tend to fit the stylistic trends of their era.

The Kaloma image has three strong stylistic elements that can be used to try to assign a range of dates to the original photographic image.

1. The sultry interaction between the subject in Kaloma and the photographer is very direct. This style is more common and representative of risqué images and nude studies from the post card era (1905 ­ 1920) than earlier 19^th century images.
2. The full figure vignetting of the image is stylistically more common during the post card era than earlier. However, earlier images were reprinted in current formats years after they were originally taken. It is possible that Kaloma was printed from an older negative and vignetted to be stylish. 
3. The use of narrow depth of field (the range of sharp focus in the photograph) was popularized by art photographers in England and Europe in the late 1880s and in America around the turn of the century. However, the number of photographers using this technique was only a small fraction of commercial photographers. Aesthetically, the Kaloma image shares much more with post 1900 images than earlier images.

In short, at this point there is little evidence, some interpretation from that evidence, and much speculation about the subject of the image known as Kaloma. Looking at the image and trying to read the story it tells leads logically to an early 20^th century photograph of a beautiful young woman, likely taken after about 1910, that first burst on the scene in 1914. No clues clearly indicate this image was copied from an earlier image of Josie Earp or another as yet unidentified young woman.

Though a few large dollar sales continue, including a sale of $2,750 at Wes Cowan’s Historic Americana Auction on November 15, 2001, Kaloma seems to be settling down a bit as logic and reason begin to impact the market. As this is written, several online sales citing the Josie tie to Kaloma have dropped to under $1,000. Several have sold on eBay, including a copy that realized $900 on February 24, 2002. Online offerings above that figure seem to languish both at auction and at dealer sites. One eBay posting of Kaloma that closed on June 16 only reached $152.50 and did not reach the reserve. Another closed on June 25 selling for $950 against an estimate of $800 – $1200.

Given the broad exposure that the image of Kaloma has had over the past 26 years and strong interest the legends of Tombstone, researchers will continue to search for compelling evidence to link this image with Josie Earp. In the meantime, without any strong objective evidence to support the claim that Kaloma is an image of Josie Earp, this identification will unfortunately be based only on speculation.