“Green meadows stretched in the sunlight, with the horizon of the gently curving hills; a quiet street overarched by mighty elms-the rows of stately trunks and the branches meeting overhead, like the pillars and arches of a cathedral aisle; a path below in green shadow, with splashes of yellow light, ⎯ this is old Deerfield.” ⎯ Mary E. Allen, 1892

Frances Stebbins Allen (1854-1941) and younger sister Mary Electa Allen (1858-1941), self taught photographers who worked in the Pictorialist aesthetic, succeeded professionally in their vocation and lived long and fruitful lives, are today’s subject. Never marrying, their sibling bond sustained them through all of life’s challenges and rewards, and they died within four days of each other. Like many of their ancestors going back to the 17th century, the sisters life-long home was in Western Massachusetts, in the village of Deerfield, a place marked by a rich history including the trauma shaping Colonial America. The PhotoSeed archive is fortunate to own a small number of their original photographs, and after collecting ten more examples earlier this year, I decided to dig a bit deeper into their lives.

The “quiet street” described by Mary Allen in our opening quote, with the sisters photograph showing it at center, was the very street she and Frances lived on starting three years later in 1895. Her words evoke for the reader religious overtones: the imagery of a cathedral, an apt metaphor for the solidity of its “pillars and arches” being a stand-in for their historic New England town. In my mind, her description also extends to photography: these lines were the first for her article in the New England Magazine, which was illustrated by halftone photographs and line engravings also given credit to the author. The importance of light— “splashes of yellow light”—is another giveaway Mary Allen was already a keen observer of the medium’s innate etymological description of “drawing with light”. Ultimately, both the sisters’ lives would be shaped by forceful inner natures aided by Yankee grit, pluck and perseverance.

Here’s a quote I came across defining the arc of their photographic accomplishments by Mel Allen, writing for Yankee Magazine in 2016:

“For three decades, from the end of the 19th century into the early 1920s, the photographs made by two sisters, Frances Stebbins Allen and Mary Electa Allen, bathed the people and landscape in and around their home in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in a painterly, elegiac glow.”

And this, from 1905, contrasting their efforts with painting:

“Another author argued that, ‘the work of Miss Frances Allen and Miss Mary Allen…would be equally at home in this room or next door to the small gallery of paintings which Mr. Tack has hung in his studio. The Misses Allen use their camera in the same spirit with which a painter uses his brush, and their sense of composition, of the dramatic moment, is as eminent a qualification for their work as for his.’”(1.)

I agree with both assessments summing up their talents, but there is so much more the Allen sisters can teach us in the second decade of the 21st century. One attribute: determination. Although it was not cited often, other than brief mentions in secondary sources, (as surely the sisters would have wanted it) their deafness, in my opinion, actually enabled them in their art. After the onset of deafness in the mid 1880s—a shocking change that led to both abandoning brief teaching careers around 1884–a new career path of professional photography took hold in 1888.

The idea that one of the human senses disrupted in life could also be perceived as an advantage lends itself to a working theory of why the sisters’ work endures to the present. At the outset of pictorial photography, in the 1890s, rules for the artistic sensibilities of the medium were still being figured out.  It’s well understood that the loss of one of the five basic human senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch can strengthen the remaining senses. I even looked it up: Neuroplasticity is the scientific name for when those affected areas of the brain are repurposed to enhance a person’s other senses. A possibility perhaps for the Allens but one which might give a clue to their determination and flexibility enabling a profound body of historical photography that still matters today.

This line of thinking could lead to a reasoning where the Allen sisters enabled vision comes into play. The adage of “trusting your eye” is perhaps the best advice anyone can give a collector considering an artist’s work.  In my mind, their photographs elicit a humanity and beautiful sense of place setting it apart from most of their contemporaries. Just look at the joy of humanity in some of their select works, as well as some of their chiaroscuro landscapes shown in this post. On a basic level, they perfected the craft of photography in a silent world. But this disability most assuredly did not prevent their great success. After coming to the attention of American photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston in the mid 1890s, the sisters were soon earning many steady assignments from national magazines such as Good Housekeeping and others- particularly for their endearing studies of children posed in and around their Old Deerfield neighborhood.

When I was a young and earnest photojournalist, my guiding philosophy was always to blend into the background and look for “found moments” with my camera. I can still hear myself introducing myself to a subject and telling them to “pretend I’m not here” as I drifted into the background, somehow trying to convince them and myself of a magical ability to disappear. But the working reality over 125 years ago for the Allen sisters was that film emulsions and lenses were not fast enough to capture spur of the moment and fleeting human interactions. Their use of a tripod-mounted view camera and all of the attendant equipment needed on location created a much different reality in approaching an assignment or chasing the waning light of a late fall afternoon. Here’s a quote by the sisters published in 1894 in the pages of The Photo-Beacon, summarizing a few of their working methods. It’s a passage showing their practical nature and endearing me to their hands-off approach:

“The merit of posing, which you kindly give us credit for, belongs rather to the models. Our chief virtue is in letting them alone. We usually have better success with children who are not too highly civilized, or too conventionally clothed, or who are too young to be conscious. We give them a general idea of the picture we want, and then let them alone until they forget about us and the drop catches an unconscious pose. They consider it a game, and are always ready to play at it.” (2.)

In 1901, Johnston promoted the Allens work in the pages of the Ladies’ Home Journal as part of the recurring feature: “The Foremost Women Photographers in America.” Vignette portraits of the sisters anchored a full page, featuring five of their better known photographs in the July issue. Before their commercial career wound down by 1920, (they continued to sell photographs from their home until 1935) they had made a good living and become well known in Deerfield and regionally for their camera artistry. By late 1918, “an Allen niece told a neighbor that ‘the aunts have eleven National magazines using their pictures this month.’” (3.)

Essential Monograph & Founding of Historic Deerfield

A lovely volume, The Allen Sisters Pictorial Photographers 1885-1920 (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/University Press of New England, 2002) was the proverbial ball that got things rolling for me in looking closer at the Allen Sisters. This monograph, deeply researched, beautifully designed, and published for a traveling exhibition of their work, was organized and written by Suzanne L. Flynt, then curator of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.

In a neat occurrence, I learned the author’s husband is the grandson of Historic Deerfield founders Henry and Helen Flynt. After the Allen sisters died, the couple purchased the sisters former home on “The Street,” converting it back to its earlier 18th century architectural origins for their summer home. Unfortunately, other than being known today as The Allen House, nothing remains of the sisters’ life in the home’s interior, other than a general footprint of its late 19th and early 20th century walls. Exterior views, front and back, are unchanged, other than a reconfiguration of a center hall chimney, and I’ve included several historical photographs of the home along with this post, matching them with modern views. Fortunately, the home is occasionally open for tours as part of the larger Old Deerfield visitor experience, which this writer took advantage of. When the Allens lived there, it served as home base for an exhibition space on the first floor, a darkroom in the cellar and studio space with skylight on the back addition. Sixty years after the sisters’ passing, Suzanne Flynt’s monograph would revive national interest in their photography, giving them much deserved acclaim for their work.

Henry Flynt, who was born in Brooklyn and became a lawyer, and his wife incorporated Historic Deerfield in 1952 in the image of Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg, another living history museum in the US. The Deerfield project, which took form in the late 1930s, was spurred on by their love and preservation of American history when their son in 1936 first attended Deerfield Academy in the town. Unlike Williamsburg, their vision was based on the much earlier English settlement of Deerfield, MA, a town incorporated in 1673. The couple’s passion project led to the town establishing the Old Deerfield Historic District in 1960, and today Historic Deerfield continues to be a vibrant destination and teaching laboratory for early American architecture as well as a showcase for important collections of historical objects, antiques and artwork, some by the Allen sisters. On Henry Flynt’s passing in 1970, the New York Times lauded his vision in part of an editorial:

“Those who preserve or restore an admirable achievement of the past also serve the future. That is because civilized men and women want to know and understand their own origins. It is not only a deep human impulse but also a sensible recognition of the fact that each generation builds on the accomplishments of all those who have gone before. There is no instant civilization and no way to manufacture a people’s heritage.

In an age of vulgar publicity and hectic impatience for results, it is worth remembering a man like Henry Flynt who took the trouble to rescue what was beautiful and enduring from an earlier age of anger, turmoil and danger.” (4.)

Old Deerfield: The Past & Raid

I visited Historic Deerfield several times this year, the first in June after reading the 2024 book The Deerfield Massacre, by James L. Swanson, who sadly passed earlier this year. (5.) I wanted to see and think about the bigger picture of the town’s history as I walked down its leafy main street. The volume is required reading for those wishing to learn more about the background and aftermath of what led to the surprise 1704 attack on Deerfield by French and Native American forces during Queen Anne’s War that killed 47 colonists.

The Allen sisters, by blood, were connected to the tragedy. Mary Allen, writing in 1892, shared her childhood impressions:

“The first tales of adventure which we who are Deerfield children heard were the stories our grandfathers lived. I remember lying on the floor, before the open Franklin stove, and reading by the firelight a worn copy of Hoyt’s ‘Antiquarian Researches.’ The book opened of its own accord to the account of the slaying of my own great-great-grandfather by the Indians. The touch of the bloody tomahawk conferred knighthood and renown on its victim. The honors which I tried to bear with modesty are borne by many Deerfield children.” (6.)

Also known as the Raid on Deerfield, 112 town residents were taken captive and forced to march in the winter snow to Montreal, 300 miles distant. As is true for all of what eventually became known as the United States, the lands in and around what became the future Deerfield were inhabited by native peoples. The indigenous Pocumtuck nation had long settled this area, with the town later “originally established as a grant of land to the residents of Dedham, Massachusetts, who had given land to the Massachusetts Bay Colony for the purpose of settling Christianized Indians.”(7.) It’s hard to believe today, but this area in western Massachusetts was once on the western frontier of English settlement, long before the boundaries of the American continent could even be delineated or a Declaration of Independence written on parchment.

Complicated is an understatement, and generational family members tracing their lineage to the 1704 raid and earlier still live in this upper Connecticut River Valley area. A most unusual relic from the raid, that of the battle-axe scarred front door from the former Ensign John Sheldon house survives. The home was razed in 1848, with a replica of the so-called “Old Indian House” erected in 1929 on a different parcel along the main street. American history pilgrims can view the door, part of a little known event shaping the country’s founding, on the second floor of Memorial Hall Museum in Old Deerfield. One interesting bit: Deerfield residents had actually tried saving the Sheldon house from destruction, their efforts of cultural preservation coalescing in 1870 with the founding of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. Today, PVMA, as part of its mission statement, “purposely chooses to remember and honor the Pocumtuck People and their homeland with the organization’s legal name. PVMA today recognizes the damage inflicted by colonial settlement and seeks to go further by interpreting these difficult histories from culturally diverse, nuanced, and inclusive perspectives.”

A collaborative effort with Historic Deerfield who manage these resources as “Memorial Libraries,”the PVMA operates the Memorial Hall Museum and its library: one of the oldest American history museums in the US and repository for over 8500 Allen sisters photographs & original glass plate negatives representing 2500 unique images.

Old Deerfield: The Present

Today, a stroll down “The Street” is a rare occurrence in modern-day America. I’m being a bit flip here of course but that’s because “progress” in this country inevitably involves heavy equipment erasing the past for a new shiny present. Not so in Old Deerfield. The majority of the homes on either side are later 18th and early 19th century in origin, with many of these Federal and later period homes accessible to tour via a Historic Deerfield day ticket. I’ve managed to pair up several “before” photographs taken by the Allens with similar vantage points in the present. Mary Allen’s view of the Manse, also known as the Willard house, as well as a photo credited to the sisters of the front door of the John Williams house, (named for Reverend John Williams, survivor of the 1704 raid) should give you a bit of the flavor of this truly old, at least for us, American town.

If you enjoy museums like I do, it can sometimes be a letdown when visiting one where hardly any photographs are exhibited. I frequently grumble to my wife when exiting nearly any art museum on our travels: “really wonderful, but why not a few photographs on the walls?” Sadly, that seems to be the norm. Not so at Memorial Hall Museum in Old Deerfield. The oldest museum in Western Massachusetts, here you will find vintage photographs by the sisters on permanent display. In the Suzanne L. Flynt Gallery, a hallway exhibition space, a yearly, revolving  gallery of images are displayed on a specific theme. The current show is called: Allen Sisters on “The Street.” Some of the exhibit’s introductory wall text:

“It’s hard not to see Deerfield through the Allen sisters’ lens. Frances and Mary Allen used the village as a backdrop in thousands of photographs. These sentimental scenes of days gone by were a mix of truth and fiction. In many photographs they posed friends, family, and neighbors, often including colonial-era costumes and props from local attics. These images were instrumental in shaping Deerfield’s historical image, and contributed to a lasting legacy of its collective memory of its past.”

The museum also features a permanent display case with two Kodak cameras used by the Allen sisters later in their career, along with some of their earlier view camera lenses and lens boards. But I’ve saved the best for last. I met with Ray Radigan, the museum’s Curator & Assistant Director, (8.) several times in preparation for this post. Ever patient and accommodating, Ray, donning white gloves as needed, gave me a peek inside the ultimate Allen sisters archive: a special storage area within the museum. This is where shelved acid-free boxes hold a treasure trove: thousands of carefully matted and loose vintage examples of the Allen sisters life work and equal number of their extant glass plate negatives.

One very good insight he shared was that even with their involvement as artisans affiliated with the Deerfield Society of Arts and Crafts (founded 1901) as well as their earlier engagement with the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework, (founded 1896) their medium of photography was technically advanced for its time and very modern indeed, especially pictorialist art photography. In this respect, Ray made the argument the Allen sisters were pushing the limit in what could then be achieved by photography. This was in contrast to the confluence of a new found interest in the Colonial revival and regional arts and crafts activity then taking place in Old Deerfield, defined by Ray’s employer, the PVMA , as “a movement that encouraged a return to hand craftsmanship, simplicity of design, and honesty of materials.”

The Allen sisters may have worked in a silent world but left unsaid is the daily influence of the larger community of Deerfield family and neighbors they worked and lived with. Combined with their super power of astute observation and the reality of their deafness, these became guiding forces that enabled a defining vision for Frances and Mary Allen producing a body of work still relevant and beautiful today.

This is the first of a two-part post on the Allen sisters of Deerfield Massachusetts. The second will focus on their involvement with the Deerfield town pageants of the early 20th Century promoting the town’s rich history.

Notes:

1. “Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts in the Martha Pratt Memorial” History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1899-1904, Vol. IV, (MA: Deerfield), 1905, 277.
2. Excerpt quote: The Allen Sisters pictorial Photographers 1885-1920, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/University Press of New England, 2002, p. 27.
3. Ibid, p. 44.
4. Excerpt: Flynt of Deerfield, The New York Times, August 15, 1970.
5. James L. Swanson was also an American historian and author of the 2006 book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. (released as a miniseries produced for Apple TV+ in 2024).
6. Excerpt, Old Deerfield, Mary E. Allen, New England Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, September, 1892, p. 34.
7. Historic Deerfield, Wikipedia accessed 2025
8. In his spare time, Ray is an accomplished children’s book illustrator.

It’s one thing to think you could glean something about the personality of someone based on their photographs alone, but that’s how pictures often lie: especially for those souls who left anonymous work or whose backstory is lacking.

Fortunately for us, today’s post gives a clearer definition for one whose artistic document of middle-class life in Queens, N.Y. at the turn of the 20th Century were the results of that amateur camera.

Jeanette Bernard, 1855-1942, is that soul, with an admirable assist from adopted daughter Minnie Fennel, 1880-1959, a photographer in her own right and likely artist behind some of the works from a small collection of about 25 vintage “press” prints by Bernard I’ve uploaded to the site

Five of these photographs feature Bernard as subject matter, and to my eye, she was no less than a force of nature, personality-wise. You can see this in a close-up of her playing the piano in her parlor, directing an intense and steady gaze upon the sheet music laid before her. And musical ability really did run her family. Due to research from this website, we discover that by the age of 24, her occupation was professor of music for the family concern: The Vogt Conservatory of Music, run out of the family home in New York City’s East Village. In an 1879 article, where it’s pointed out she was a graduate of the prestigious Berlin Conservatory in Germany, (known as the Stern Conservatory, which still exists) her job at the Vogt Conservatory was described thus:

“Elementary singing and piano are taught by Miss Jeanette Vogt, a graduate of the Berlin Conservatory. The lady’s public performances as pianiste won her much critical commendation for her musicianly attainments.”

So music was one spoke of her wheel. How about the subject of love and romance? You can see those in her photo of daughter Minnie and husband (or soon-to-be) Frank Keyser gazing into each others eyes, or something completely unexpected: a tryst in the woods gone wrong, with a man waving his cane from behind a tree to interrupt the moment for a courting couple. In terms of a multi-dimensional personality, lets also consider her droll sense of humor.

Look no further than a study of the artist-probably taken by daughter Minnie- where she sports a large floppy hat while holding a wood hay rake by her side. But what’s that painting next to her? A study of the photographer herself, standing in similar repose. Life imitating art? Art imitating life? Both could arguably apply to this New Yorker who seemingly had the gift of self-deprecation while channeling her own inner reality. For this is a life lived in the moment, and one (momentarily) uncorrupted by the omnipresent social mores which hindered women navigating modern society- even accomplished women like Bernard- a full 70 years before an artist like Cindy Sherman would come along with an update. Sherman’s leap would call out the obvious, with its’ famous photographic self-tropes in Untitled Film Stills fueling the deconstruction of female stereotypes.

Another words, if you think something hasn’t been done in photography before, maybe think again. But that’s not all. Besides being someone naturally creative in the arts, Jeanette Bernard should be admired for her work ethic. Take a gander, of all things, while she patiently plucks the feathers from a goose or other bird of fowl while preparing the family meal. Her trusty terrier by her side, she has come prepared. Dressed warmly with a head covering and lap apron, those feathers mounded in the tin wash basin set before her will surely not to be wasted. Comfortable pillows or other domestic necessities are but one possible outcome for Bernard, whose thrift kept middle class families like hers solvent and well fed 125 years ago.

I had initially learned of Bernard’s work about 15 years ago, when Jami Guthrie of Ryerson University & George Eastman House published her thesis: “Jeanette Bernard And American Amateur Photography Contests In The Early Twentieth Century”. Three years later, in late 2013, writer Ron Marzlock contributed more details through his article on the photographer and her neighborhood for the Queens Chronicle newspaper.

Both finally gave the artist some long overdue recognition, and it’s hoped our own scholarship fills in some of the biographical gaps of the remarkable life of Jeanette Bernard while pulling you into her orbit: one in which her wonderfully humane photographs provide the keystone to her unique personality, which now can shine through a bit brighter.

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 

Ivy, at least the evergreen variety known to climb and adhere to brick walls, is academically synonymous mostly in the northeastern United States with that of the Ivy League. But this isn’t about those educational institutions and membership in the well-known sports league. Rather, ivy for the purposes of this post during late Spring is symbolic for the ties that will bind newly minted graduates at this time of year: “The connection between the college and its graduates”, is how Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts aptly describes it, and the continuing reason her senior offspring have, since 1884, ceremonially planted it on a special day before Commencement.

In 1900, when these cyanotype photographs were taken, a new century beckoned on Ivy Day for those who would soon graduate from Smith. Like then as in the present, newly minted graduates the world over feel the same emotions that strains of Pomp and Circumstance invoke and traditions call for. Laurels are bestowed for hard work, fortunes and insight will be made or come from it, and hopefully, friendships made during college days will endure far into the future.

Speaking of photography in general, of which this website is particularly enamored of, our recent visit to Rochester, New York and attendance in the three-day conference “PhotoHistory/PhotoFuture” sponsored and organized by RIT Press and The Wallace Center at the Rochester Institute of Technology gave new meaning to their claims for the medium: “there has never been more of it than there is today.” That might be stating the obvious, especially in 2018, but the new meaning part was my own takeaway and inspiration.

In present day Kodak city, the power of ideas relating to what made this place significant as an imaging industrial behemoth still exists, but has now gone in a new direction. With all due apologies, but the pun indeed appropriate, a snapshot of those ideas put forth by the conference attendees and speakers shows their passion for the medium’s minutiae both preserves and continues this essential democratic language. Those of memories past surely, but more and more the future in the form of ones and zeroes hurtling forward.

Although the “Big Yellow” of Rochester’s past is long gone, the ideas nourishing photography’s entire corpus continues apace, an alternate reality both present and future. For those curious enough, the RIT conference program along with a list of presenters can be found here, along with a few photos from the weekend courtesy of yours truly.  David Spencer-