At PhotoSeed, we celebrate the life of Ann McElroy Spencer, 1929-2021, one of our most profound influences.

Words often fail at times like these, but I wanted to take a few moments to recount one remembrance in the very rich life of my mother, Ann McElroy Spencer, 1929-2021, who passed last week. And it has a photography angle! On a late spring day about 20 years ago, I discovered the true secret of her selfless character, qualities reaffirmed to me in her final years by her fellow residents at the assisted living facility she called home.

On that day, she suggested we take a walk around my old neighborhood, where I had grown up but had long since departed for a career in newspaper photojournalism and, in my mind, greener pastures. To my surprise, the walk this day took us up a long steep hill, a bit distant from the route I was expecting. After reaching the summit and turning left, I was hesitant about where the journey would ultimately lead, but she seemed intent, and I did not question, happy to be sharing some good one-on-one time with her.

Shortly, we found ourselves in front of an unknown mailbox, in front of a house that was also unknown, at least to me.  It was in the next moment, however, that she produced an envelope from somewhere, and proceeded to open the mailbox and deposit the letter within. I casually asked what she was doing and she matter-of-factly stated that earlier that spring, on a previous journey past this mailbox, she had made a mental note to bring along her camera in order to take pictures of flowers growing near it. “A very beautiful display,” or something to that effect, is my recollection of her intent, and reason enough to capture their beauty for eternity, thanks to photography’s magic. She had made prints and placed them in that envelope, intent on sharing them with whomever retrieved the mail at that address—folks that, to the best of my knowledge looking back these many years, were complete strangers. That was my mom.   David Spencer-

The Piano Lesson

by Ann Spencer

She was always there, waiting, just inside the door. I came lingeringly up the walk, book-bag bumping against my leg. She opened the door and I sidled past into the dim hall that seemed to smell of old things. “Five minutes late!” she said. I smiled weakly. I followed her into the living room, brushing against the heavy brown velveteen portieres, which helped keep the room warm in winter. She waited silently while I took off my coat and dropped it on the horsehair sofa. The armchairs, each with their antimacassars, stood guard, like sentinels, in their appointed places. Somewhere a clock chimed the quarter hour. It was risky to be late. It was rude to allow her to wait, in expectation, behind the etched glass window of the front door. Promptness was a virtue.

Ida Conrad Babb was Conservatory trained and was one of the two piano teachers in our small New England town. It was the depths of the Depression, and the money she made by giving lessons provided for her groceries: she had no car. She was tenacious of her pupils and held herself stiffly, as if the loss of even one student would cause her to crack and send her to the poor farm on East River Street. I recall her across the gulf of the years, not unkindly, but with some trepidation. She was one of the few adults in my life at the time who evaluated my work. I felt sorry for her- in my way. She was my first piano teacher.

We approached the piano which was housed in an alcove off the living room- a large instrument tucked into a little space, almost like an afterthought. Pulling out the music from my bag, I put Henri Hertz- Scales and Arpeggios on the piano rack. “Well,” she said, “let’s commence with the scales. We have to warm up the fingers first,” and she’d smile so that her slightly protruding teeth showed. I started off, thinking to myself that yesterday when I had practiced scales, I’d said to mother, “Henry Hertz when I do these!” and she had laughed. Now I dutifully sawed through the music- not much facility there- certainly no joy. I was sure she’d give me a “Fair” this week on my report card.

A dog barked somewhere in the back of the house, and I ploughed on through the other studies. “Mind your fingering.” “Commence again- play it at half-tempo.” And again: “You’re not practicing this étude as you ought,” she’d say, reproachfully. Never any praise. It was a relief when she said, “Get that folder, Ann, on top of the piano.” I moved carefully- not much space- and tentatively set aside the framed photograph of her brother killed in World War I. The street she lived on bore his name. I took the folder which contained the pieces. She leafed through the contents and selected one. Now I could sit in her seat by the window and she would sit at the piano and demonstrate how the piece should be played. Spare, erect, hand held above the keyboard- never would she allow them to droop- she played the short composition with fluidity and grace. “Your turn now, “ she said. She seemed happy to restore the piano to me. Never once did I hear her in recital.

After the lesson and after she had meticulously graded my report card- “Fair” for scales and arpeggios, “Very good” for the memorized piece- she told me to go to the kitchen- would I see the dog? to get a note for my parents which would be on the kitchen table. Entering the room, I was suddenly aware of her husband, smoking a pipe in the failing light of a winter’s afternoon. He knew my father, yet he spoke no greeting: a dusty plant, neglected, in a dark corner. I was a little afraid. “Hello,” I said, grabbed the note and didn’t wait for a response.

The tree at the end of her front walk still bore its leaves- sere, clicking against each other in the January wind. “That tree wun’t lose its leaves until spring,” she said. I stumbled back home across the frozen ruts of the two fields which separated our house from hers.

The following week, I commenced piano studies with the other teacher in town. He was a jolly man who emphasized popular tunes over études.

A Christmas Wish

On this first day of November, the words of American photographer Frederick Britton Hodges, who wrote the following lines about the month in 1915, seem an appropriate tonic for the constant upheaval of the present:

“The years’ end in November, after all the glorious riot of summer verdure, brings opportunities to observe how full of inspiring force are the more subtle phases of Nature. We are shown to what an extent we are charmed by the variety of form. …

Let us call November the broadening month, the month in which we cast out the selfish intrusions that will creep in and occupy some of the valuable space in our minds, and look with clear, sane eyes. Our ideas are not large enough—no, it is hard to make them so. It takes us a long time to discover good in the work of others, that we disdained, at first, to give a second glance.”  (1.)

1. Excerpt: F.B. Hodges: “November”, The Camera, (The Camera Publishing Company): November, 1915. pp. 641-42.

19th Century amateur photographers faced trials and tribulations in mastering their new found craft, put into the spotlight after photography itself became a growing mass medium with the marketing of Kodak’s #1 box camera in late 1888.

In 1889, taking advantage of this new large audience-by giving them a fun diversion- the Milton Bradley company of Springfield, Massachusetts produced what is believed to be the world’s first card game on photography, one they called “The Amateur Photographer”.  So now, the agony and ecstasy experienced by those dedicated amateurs who owned more advanced cameras and maintained wet darkrooms while embracing art and science could be enjoyed by all. PhotoSeed recently acquired 24 cards of this game from the original set of 36.

The directions for this Victorian card game can be seen printed below in a vintage advertisement for the 1889-90 Milton Bradley Company “Catalogue of Games, Sectional Pictures, Toys, Puzzles, Blocks and Novelties”. 

For the most part up to the present day, physical card and board games have never featured the character of the photographer, although video games beginning in the 1990’s have included many, including: “Polaroid Pete” (1992), “Pokémon Snap” (1999), “Dead Rising” (2006): excerpt: “gamers play photojournalist Frank West, who somehow got stuck in a shopping mall in Colorado during the zombie apocalypse. Frank has to fight his way out through hoardes of zombies and uncover the truth with his camera.” and “Spiderman 3” (2007).

Instead, popular culture has taken the lead, with the larger than life character of the photographer (for good and bad) celebrated in films taking hold in our collective imaginations. Some that come to mind by this writer include James Stewart’s character spying out his apartment window using a telephoto camera lens in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful film “Rear Window”, (1954) and Peter Parker’s more recent alter-ego occupation sans Spiderman suit. Enjoy the following select game cards from this surviving set.

One exception found online by this website is the 2016 Japanese card game  “Wind the Film!”, a half-frame camera photography themed card game for 2-4 players.

“Coburnesque”, or, in the style of American master pictorialist Alvin Langdon Coburn, (1882-1966) was how the work of now forgotten American photographer Henry Ravell (1864-1930) was described in 1908 by London’s Amateur Photographer & Photographic News.

Under the headline “Local Colour.” by journal critic “The Magpie”, a discussion of the merits around Ravell’s new color multiple gum printing process was considered for their large readership. Commenting on a series of his Mexican church photographs published in the May issue of the Century Magazine, “Magpie” writes:

“Who is this Mr. Ravell, and what is his wonderful colour process, which is not “on the negative”? Multiple-gum, one may surmise- and one may also venture to guess that Mr. “de Forest” (Lockwood de Forest- editor) has, notwithstanding this flourish of trumpets, nothing very much to tell us. The Ravell photographs, illustrating “Some Mexican Churches,” are Coburnesque, and the pictures are, in their very Yankee style, fine and strong- which is more than can be said for those in our English monthlies. Couldn’t Mr. Ravell be induced to send some examples of his work to the R.P.S. or Salon? We badly need some new American exhibitors.” (June 16, p. 600)

A reassessment of Ravell’s output is long overdue in elevating him back to his rightful position as one of the more important practitioners of pictorialism in the early 20th Century canon of American artistic photographers.

Undoubtedly, “Magpie” would have been pleased to know Henry Ravell sprung from fine English photographic stock. His father Charles Henry Ravell (1833-1917) emigrated to the U.S. from Boston, England and was known to have been active as a Daguerreotypist as early as 1857, (1.) his trade shingle set up early in the New York state village of Chittenango. By 1860, U.S. Census records show he had moved to Wolcott, New York, where he was a commercial photographer. Surviving cdv photographs from here bearing his C.H. Ravell back-stamp reveal some of his clients were young men heading off to fight in the American Civil War.

Born in early January of 1864 in Wolcott, Henry Ravell is known to have embraced photography from a very young age. As a boy, he became his father’s apprentice. Lockwood de Forest, (1850-1932) an important influence on Henry for the rest of his life in the 20th Century and important American painter and furniture designer, wrote in 1908 that Henry:

“was born and brought up in photography from childhood and became an expert in all processes before he was twelve years old.” Through a fascinating confluence of sons starting out in their father’s professions, Henry Ravell graduated to having an interest in art, and he studied water-color painting with the noted American artist and Tonalist Henry Ward Ranger, (1858-1916) probably in his late teens or early 20’s.  The artist and student had much in common. Like Charles Henry Ravell, who had established his own Canal Street photo studio in Lyons, N.Y. by 1867, (Wayne County Business Directory) Ranger’s father Ward Valencourt Ranger (1835–1905) had opened his own commercial studio in 1868 in Syracuse, N.Y., 55 miles east of Lyons, almost at the same time. Like Henry Ravell working for his father at an early age, Henry Ranger was also known to have worked in his father’s establishment as a young man.

Sometime in the early 1880’s after Henry had finished this “apprenticeship”, he moved to nearby Auburn, New York, about halfway to Syracuse from Lyons, to a job crafting Crayon and Pastel portrait photographic enlargements for Ten Eyck & Co.  At the time, this firm is said to have been the largest of its’ type in the world. This gave Henry additional artistic skills, combining his interest in photography and art, an important and influential confluence indeed. He kept at this profession until either 1883, according to Lockwood de Forest, or as late as 1892, in a posthumous biography of Henry by sister Florence.

At this time, Henry is said to have moved to Cuernavava Mexico, south of Mexico City, where he became a far-flung agent for the Ten Eyck & Co. firm, although a certain amount of traveling back and forth to the U.S. and the family home was probably the reality. To wit, the Minnesota State Census for 1895 lists his occupation as “artist”, claiming an American residence while living with his father, mother and younger brother, Charles Ravell Jr. in the city of St. Paul. Here his father finished out his career running a photo studio on Western Ave. from 1890-92.

During the mid 1880’s back in Lyons, a fascinating yet presently unsubstantiated account of Henry’s involvement with the development of the first Kodak camera is relevant for background on his future career as a master photographer who became a striver with his own agenda. This event is worthy of historical contemplation in the present from reminisces provided in the aforementioned posthumous biography published in 1940:

“George Eastman of Rochester, New York, was a family friend. During a visit of three or four weeks, Mr. Eastman worked on and developed his famous Kodak, with the help of my father and brother.” “Their workshop was the basement of our former home at 70 Broad Street, Lyons. Mr. Eastman offered my father stock in the Kodak Company, which he often regretted not accepting.”  (2.)

Memories can sometimes be suspect, but several details of Florence’s biography are important and worth following up on, with this website happy to accept the challenge. By tracking down old street addresses, the Ravell family home as published in the 1886-87 Lyons residential directory was actually found to be located as 40 Broad Street. (William Smith, whose occupation was Express Transfer Agent, lived at 70 Broad St. as published in the same directory) Coupled with the knowledge that Lyons street addresses had been renumbered, probably in the early 20th Century, and cross-referencing with a 1904 Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map found online at the Library of Congress, the former and still standing Ravell home built in 1850 revealed itself to be the present day 64 Broad Street. All of this effort, if somehow confirming a claim George Eastman had actually spent time in Lyons was true, could result in a potentially fascinating footnote to the development of one of the most important inventions of the 19th Century- The Kodak No. 1 Camera which debuted in 1888: “By far the most significant event in the history of amateur photography”, according to the Met Museum in New York City.

The earliest published references to Ravell’s photographic work in the popular press is found around 1905, when Boston’s Photo-Era, writing for their December issue, pronounces him “A new star of the first magnitude”, although noting his two pictures: “Pleasant Valley” and “Viga Canal”, “do not represent him at his best.” This assessment also including listing him on the journal’s noteworthy list of exhibitors whose work had been accepted for the Second American Photographic Salon which ran from 1905-06.

Florence Ravell, quoting Lockwood de Forest for her 1940 article on Henry, expanded on her brothers new found respect in the profession, particularly in his mastery of the gum print, which would soon establish him as a major talent:

“Henry Ravell was recognized as one of the leading artists in his profession, both in this country and in Europe where he had exhibited, and has been a contributor to many of the photographic magazines, where a description of his technical processes are given. He succeeded in making a gum print in one printing with results far beyond the finest etchings and very similar in character.”  

Henry perfected the gum bichromate process to a very high level. Probably in 1906-07, he began experimenting in multiple color gum. In Germany, around this same time, similar examples were being done by the brothers Theodor (1868-1943) and Oscar Hofmeister, (1871-1937) as well as Heinrich Wilhelm Müller (1859-1933) (3.) The following quote in the December,1908 issue of Boston’s Photo-Era encapsulates the admiration these gum prints received:

“It will be remembered that last summer Henry Ravell, of Mexico, exhibited in New York and Boston his results in multiple gum-bichromate printing in color. They excited considerable interest at the time, especially among our painters, who were very cordial in their praise of Mr. Ravell’s beautiful work, for it showed, in an eminent degree, the artistic possibilities of the gum-process.” (p. 300)

Again writing in 1940, Florence wrote of her younger brother: “but his favorite work was photography, and the gum print process. This process was original with an Austrian who refused to make it known, but Henry experimented until he developed it, and later gave the formula to the world.” The conjecture of this website is the possibility Henry originally gleaned and modified his own multiple gum color process from the earlier work of Austrian photographer Heinrich Kühn. (1866-1944) An 1897 example of a three-color gum print by him can be found in the collection of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg Germany.

In 1908, Henry’s champion Lockwood de Forest gave a fuller explanation of the technical details for this color process, as part of copy included with a series of Mexican Church studies published in the May issue of the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine:

“Last summer he started experiments in color-printing. His process is simple. Instead of introducing colors on the negatives, as in the lumière process, he is using the colors in the sensitizer of the printing paper. The specimens he has sent me are printed in three or four colors. Each print is finished, recoated all over with the sensitizer with the next color, and again printed. This is done for each color separately, the black print coming last, as in the regular color-printing process.”

Ravell continued to work in Mexico until about 1914, when it is believed he moved back to the Los Angeles area of California in order to escape the Civil War (Mexican Revolution) then engulfing the country. A short biography included in the 1978 volume Pictorial Photography in Britain 1900-1920 gives 1916 as a slightly later date, although it was likely he was traveling back and forth from Mexico to the U.S. several times during this tumultuous time:

“In 1916 an article entitled “Cathedrals of Mexico”, illustrated by his work, was published in Harper’s magazine. About this time he left Mexico, almost as a refugee. His studio in Cuernavaca was destroyed by rebels. He moved to California where he began to photograph near Carmel and settled at Santa Barbara.”

Now that this American born “refugee” was back in his home country for good, he immediately set out photographing the beauty of the southern California coastline, with an emphasis on capturing the numerous entanglements of old cypress trees set against the landscape and Pacific Ocean. Conveniently, and perhaps not coincidentally, Lockwood de Forest had moved permanently to Santa Barbara in 1915 after wintering in the area since 1902, with his professional connections to the world of art giving Henry and his work credibility and entrance to a larger audience. These included retrospective exhibitions of nearly 100 framed works of his Mexican and California subjects at major American institutions. These began in October, 1918 at the Pratt Institute Art Gallery in Brooklyn and continued into 1919 at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York followed by shows the same year at the newly opened Cleveland Museum of Art and then at the Chicago Art Institute.

Henry Ravell would continue to exhibit his work late into the 1920’s at smaller venues, one example being a tri-colored gum print titled “Mexican Peon Boy” shown at the 1927 Los Angeles Salon and remarked on by Camera Craft, his gum prints deemed “for which he has gained a warranted renown”. Gum printing was indeed so important to the artist that he listed “Gum Printer” as his occupation for the 1920 U.S. Census.

The Albright Art Gallery was an important venue for Ravell’s work, considering the groundbreaking exhibition it previously hosted in November, 1910: the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography. Organized by the Photo-Secession under the direction of Alfred Stieglitz, it was “the first exhibition held at an American museum that aimed to elevate photography’s stature from a purely scientific pursuit to a visual form of artistic expression.” Even nine years later, in 1919, at a time when museum shows devoted to the work of a singular photographer anywhere in the world were still few and far between and remained so decades later, it’s refreshing in the present to read observations by one curator remarking on Ravell’s 93 framed photographs displayed at the Albright gallery for Academy Notes, the mouthpiece for The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy:

“THE collection of photographs by H. Ravell—which was on view in the gallery during the last week in February and all of March—is very unique and valuable. These photographs are technically known as gum-prints and have all the painter’s quality in their execution. They do not impress one as photographs but rather as work directly from the artist’s brush. The photographs were made by H. Ravell who is now in Santa Barbara. Many of the pictures were taken near Carmel, California, a seashore of much variety where the fantastic cypress trees with their twisted dramatic forms produce wonderful compositions against sea and sky.” …This is but a short description of the remarkable exhibition of photographs shown at the Albright Art Gallery. It was seen by many art lovers and appreciated especially by all of those interested in artistic photography.” (4.)

A reevaluation of Henry Ravell’s body of work is important to consider in the present given the broad acknowledgement of his talent by major institutions and the popular press for the benefit of many large audiences over 100 years ago. An important pictorialist photographer who was also a  painter, Henry Ravell was a striver and apprentice graduate inspired by his father’s steady trade in the New York state village of Lyons who embraced a love for craft and mastery of art. Together, these skills gave him the passion to embrace adventure in capturing the beauty in far-off Mexico and southern California for the ages.

Four original gum prints in the PhotoSeed Archive can be seen here, each listing an expanded biography, timeline and major institutional holdings for the artist.

Afterword | Notes

A conundrum on internet research into Henry Ravell’s artistic output reveals itself quickly. The bottom line is that most every painting on the web attributed to Henry Ravell the photographer is not by him. Instead, through PhotoSeed’s research and purchase of the small painting: “The Ripers”, (The Reapers) the true identity of this artist can now be revealed as Henry Etienne Ravel. (1872-1962) Born in Naples Italy to French citizens, Henry Ravel immigrated to America in 1906 and became a naturalized US citizen in 1920. A transportation clerk by trade in the early 1920’s, his paintings- many done in Europe- date from ca. 1930’s-1950’s. What causes the confusion is that like Henry Ravell the photographer, who signed his photographs  “H. Ravell”, Henry Ravel the painter also signed his work similarly, but as “H. Ravel” Numerous examples of his paintings show up on Google searches-unlike the real and quite rare examples of watercolors done by Ravell the photographer. I’ve included links to some of these paintings on the page showing “The Ripers”. As always- buyer beware and do your homework!

1. C. Ravel won a $3.00 premium for “Best Daguerreotypes” during the Annual Fair of the Madison County Agricultural Society held at Morrisville, (N.Y.) on the 15th, 16th and 17th days of September,1857 according to a newspaper account in the Cazenovia Republican. Shout out to the Pioneer American Photographers 1839-1860 website.   Langdon’s List of 19th & Early 20th Century Photographers additionally list Ravel working in Manlius, New York in the 1859 N.Y. State Business Directory.

2. See: The Lyons Republican & Clyde Times: Lyons, N.Y. Thursday, March 21, 1940. Article excerpts: HENRY RAVELL: “Resided in Lyons for twenty-eight years, died in Los Angeles California, January 20, 1930. This account was written by his sister, Mrs. Florence Ravell Lothrop, of 721 Fifth Street North, St. Petersburg, Florida.: “Henry had no special training in any school or under any masters except my father, Charles Herring Ravel, who was born in Boston, England, and became one of the first photographers in the United States. His forbears came over with William the Conqueror to England, which accounts for the one “L” in the name. My mother was annoyed because most people called her Mrs. Rav’-el and persuaded my father to add “L”, so the family adopted that spelling of our name.…Henry studied and experimented all his life. His photographic subjects were portraits, landscapes, street scenes, trees, cloud and moonlight effects. His Mexican Cathedrals were especially noteworthy. He used both oils and water colors, but his favorite work was photography, and the gum print process. This process was original with an Austrian who refused to make it known, but Henry experimented until he developed it, and later gave the formula to the world. I remember seeing around his studio, pans of water about three inches deep. The photo-print was put into the water and pigments of paint dropped on it, this gave the effect when completed of a soft beautiful painting. My description to an artist will seem crude but that is as I recall it.…Henry never taught, that is, acted as a teacher in any school, and I do not know what societies he belonged. He exhibited in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Salon about 1907. From the thousands of photographs submitted, three of his were among the 237 accepted. His work was exhibited at the Salmagundi Club, New York City; Thurber’s and Anderson’s Galleries in Chicago, Los Angeles, California, and many, many other places. Fifteen of his photographs are at the Metropolitan Museum, New York City. Seven are Mexican subjects and eight are California trees. These were selected by Forest Lockwood.(sic) After Henry’s death at Los Angeles, California, in 1930, a request came for him to send an exhibit to the Fifth International Photographic Salon of Japan held at Tokyo and Osaka in May, 1931.”

3. In the December, 1908 issue of Boston’s Photo-Era, a short article titled “Gum-Prints In Colors” appeared, linking Ravell’s gum prints as being similar to “a collection of prints by the same process, probably with modifications” to work done by the Hofmeister brothers and Müller. These German works were shown at the offices of The British Journal of Photography in London’s Strand from September 28- October 24, 1907. 

4. See: Academy Notes: The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy: Albright Art Gallery: Buffalo, New York: vol. XIV: Jan.-Oct. 1919, p. 67