Image from Oboler Library Special Collections and Archives featured in Ken Burns documentary
Brady Cooke is a senior at ISU double majoring in History and Political Science with a minor in Global Studies and plans to graduate in December 2025. Previously, he worked at the library’s reference desk helping patrons with research questions, but this year earned a Career Path Internship due to his noted interest in archival work. As a library student assistant over the past year, he has had several opportunities to apply his love of history to his job. Brady is excited about his work digitizing photos like the Burns collection and assisting the University Archivist and Special Collection Librarian.
One of the images, "Winter in Yellowstone" from the Lloyd S. Furniss Collection housed in the Oboler Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA) department is featured in a recent Ken Burns documentary focusing on the history of the American Buffalo.
Beginning in 2017, CPI students and staff working in Special Collections began processing the Furniss collection that included conducting a complete inventory, digitizing negatives, creating exhibits, and making portions of the collection available online. The collection consists of nearly 42,000 photographic negatives taken by Furniss from 1959 through 1995.
Furniss was born in Ogden, Utah, on January 24, 1918. After completing his high school education, he enlisted in the Army. During his military service, he completed ranger training and fought in the Pacific theater in World War II. When the war ended, he attempted a career as a commercial artist and began his art training at the Art Institute of Chicago. While working as a lens grinder in Chicago, Lloyd became interested in photography and changed his career path. In 1951, Furniss was hired as the chief photographer for the Pocatello newspaper, Idaho State Journal. Seven years later, he became the campus photographer for Idaho State College, now Idaho State University. Furniss’ photographs were featured in local and national publications, appearing in the Wickiup, Idaho State University’s yearbook, Life, and Sports Illustrated. Additionally, he operated a portrait studio in downtown Pocatello, and the Pocatello Camera Club.
Following his death in 2011, his family donated the negatives of his life’s work, nearly 42,000 of them, to Idaho State University’s Special Collections and Archives department. In addition to this collection, Furniss’s work is also found in ISU’s photograph collection and in the Idaho State Journal negative collection, both of which are housed in SCA.
In 2021, in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of Yellowstone National Park in 2022, another CPI student, Jasmine Housman created a physical exhibit of images from various collections focusing on the park. Her project included choosing the images, digitizing them and printing surrogate copies to be displayed, creating the text for each image, matting, framing, and installation. That exhibit was then placed online for world-wide access.
Early in the spring of 2023 SCA was contacted by a production assistant from Florentine Films for permission to use Furniss’s image "Winter in Yellowstone" in the Ken Burns documentary, The American Buffalo. The production assistant had found the image online when conducting research for the project. The documentary aired on PBS in October 2023 and has been distributed world-wide. Idaho State University is acknowledged in the film credits.
