Possibly a silver bromide print, this scenic view of a river in winter is from a series of landscape photographs believed to have been taken by Philippe H. Bonnet at Middlesex Fells Reservation, a 2500 acre natural area located just north of Boston. A double-lined, hand-ruled frame in blue ink compliments the deep-blue effect achieved through the darkroom technique of blue-toning.

Born in France, as a younger man in college, Philippe H. Bonnet, (1904-1977) was a staff photographer for The Tech, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s undergraduate student newspaper. He is believed to have graduated from MIT in 1931 as listed in the Tech.  In the early 1960’s, a newspaper said he was a well known Boston architect. He also later made a name for himself as a railroad photographer-especially of trolley cars- and made his own real photo post cards and stamped them individually as a “Ferroviagraph“.