Bordering on slapstick, this contrived genre study by Queens, New York amateur photographer Jeanette Bernard (b. Philadelphia: 1855-1942) is believed to show her adopted daughter Minnie Fennel Keyser (b. 1880) in the role of hapless pedestrian.  The misstep, in which ingredients of her Thanksgiving meal are spilled out onto a dirt walkway, include the overturned basket which held a plucked chicken or turkey; root vegetables including potatoes, yams, carrots as well as a few apples and an umbrella to the left, are humorous to see on close inspection.

This is because a piece of cloth Minnie has been thoughtfully provided for the duration of the photo shoot saves her the indignity of actually getting her dress dirty while in the prone position. It makes the process a bit more bearable for the model while the artist goes through the laborious process of composing this “action photograph” in order to make it believable to the viewer.

Jeanette Wilhelmine Bernard: 1855-1942

Born Jeanette Vogt in Philadelphia, PA on January 5, 1855, (1.) Jeanette Bernard would become a trained musician by profession before embracing amateur photography around the turn of the 20th Century. Hailing from a family of musicians, in 1880, when she was 24, her family, including father George, mother Wilhelmine and two older siblings William and Amelia, were living in New York City (2.) where she was employed in the family concern: the Vogt Conservatory of Music, headquartered in their home at 205 E. 15th St. Her father George Vogt (b. ca. 1814-15 Saxony, Germany- died c. 1906?) had previously made a good living as a manufacturer of pianofortes (pianos) while living with his young family in Camden, New Jersey as early as 1850. (3.) The 1880 census lists Jeanette, along with her father and siblings, as professors of music at the Vogt Conservatory.

An advertisement for this business in the November 8, 1879 issue of The American Journal lists William G. Vogt as its Director, featuring classes including Elementary Chorus, Solo Singing: Solo, Ensemble playing for Piano; String and Wind Instruments; Sight Reading, Theory, Harmony, Composition, Score Readings, Elocution, with dramatic expression; Italian Language. (4.)

In 1892, with Bernard’s musical career apparently waning, she married Louis Bernard, (1838-1923) a merchant, in Newark, New Jersey on March 31. By 1900, (Census) she now had a family, adopting daughter Minnie Fennel, (Minnie W. Keyser: 1880-1959) nearly 20, (4a.) sometime after the marriage. They lived on Burroughs Ave. in Queens and were supported by Louis, now a bookkeeper. It was during this time Jeanette actively embraced amateur photography, recording for her camera the scenes of daily family life around their large home. (5.) By 1910, US Census records indicate daughter Minnie, son-in-law Frank Keyser, (1873-1940) and newborn daughter Emma (1910-1972: Emma Jeanette “Nettie” Keyser Gribbons) had moved away, possibly to Brooklyn, with an address of 129 Patchen Ave. recorded for Fennel and “Mrs. Keyser” in the Guthrie thesis cited below. Jeanette’s husband Louis, now 70, continued to support the couple by working as a clerk in a pencil company. By 1920, (Census) the entire extended family was now living again in the Burroughs Ave. home, with the artists husband continuing to work at the American Lead Pencil Co. as a bookkeeper and Frank Keyser a manager at the Brooklyn-based National Almond Products Company. In 1923, Jeanettes husband died, being the most likely catalyst that brought her amateur photography career to a close, her last documented contest entry dated only one year later.

New Recognition

It wasn’t for another 90 years until the artists work finally received some well deserved recognition. For her 2010 masters dissertation: “Jeanette Bernard And American Amateur Photography Contests In The Early Twentieth Century”, by Jami Guthrie of Ryerson University & George Eastman House, the significance of Bernard’s amateur work began to get noticed. By way of a 1983 acquisition by (then named) the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film of 101 of Bernard’s photographs, Guthrie’s thesis documents a robust 20 year period, from 1904-24, when this artist was an active participant of amateur photography contests in the US. (6.) She writes:

“Bernard submitted her work to contests in illustrated newspapers such as Leslie’s Weekly, The Evening Mail Illustrated Saturday Magazine, Browning’s Magazine, and The Youth’s Companion. These publications were predominantly nationwide weekly newspapers that included amateur photography contests as a regular feature. Leslie’s Weekly published Bernard’s winning photographs most frequently, and she also won this newspaper’s viewer’s choice “Who is Our Best Amateur Photographer” contest in 1907.” (7.)

Bernard’s Work: PhotoSeed Archive

Consisting of approximately 25 vintage press prints, this charming collection of photographs by Jeanette Bernard (8.) depicts daily life in and around her Winfield Junction, Woodside, Queens home from about 1900 to the early 1920s. Unlike similar artistic work of the period, these photographs often depict the photographer herself and other family members- role playing and starring in photographs capturing a bygone New York City suburban life of early 20th Century America. Some of the work features Bernard’s adopted daughter Minnie Fennel, her husband Frank Keyser, and their daughter, Emma Keyser, born in 1910.

There’s the photographer herself: standing with a large rake playing the role of farmhand, a painting of the same propped on the ground to her right. In another, she plays the role of a (seemingly) elderly woman adorned with a shawl while pointing her camera at a young child giving off a Little Red Riding Hood vibe: the artists step-grandchild perhaps? In one, there’s a wonderful snowball fight in the backyard of the family home while another possesses a bit of theatricality bordering on slapstick, the 1907 staged holiday scene: “Oh, Dear, My Thanksgiving Dinner!”, in which Minnie lays face-down in the dirt after tripping and spilling the contents of a holiday meal she was carrying in her basket. Yet another shows the unexpected: an intimate romantic moment of Minnie and husband (or soon to be) Frank Keyser gazing at each other while spooning in the grass. Other photos include Minnie in the role of fortune teller with playing cards, and one where she hides behind a towering shock of harvested corn while playing hide and seek with daughter Emma. Other genre work includes an elderly gentleman (possibly Louis Bernard, the artists husband) getting his hair cut on a Sunday morning and the artist herself, an accomplished musician, playing the piano in the parlor of the family home.

A Recent Take

The following article by Ron Marzlock, courtesy of the Queens Chronicle newspaper, gives additional background on the artist, including an update on her neighborhood.

Queens’ Own Pioneer Woman Photographer

We are all familiar with early women photographers like Bernice Abbott and Margaret Bourke-White. However, one of the earliest and best amateurs lived in our own backyard.

Jeanette Bernard (1855-1941) married her husband Louis in 1892, 16 years her senior, and they purchased a large house in Winfield Junction which today that is 50-05 66 St. in Woodside, on the borderline of Maspeth.

Too old to have children, they adopted Minnie Fennel, born October 1880, already a young teen, to be their daughter. Census records show Bernard’s occupation as a music teacher, though her real passion was photography. From 1904 until 1924 she took thousands of photographs, hand-developed them and sent them to magazines, publications and newspapers, entering them in photo contests.

She regularly submitted to Leslie’s Weekly, winning the award “Best Amateur Photographer of 1907.” She submitted to Youth’s Companion, Brownings Magazine, and the Evening Mail Illustrated Saturday Magazine. Her photos were sometimes very humorous and depicted early Queens County life.

When her daughter Minnie married Frank Keyser they all continued to live under the same roof for the rest of their lives. Minnie operated a candy store in Glendale until the 1950s and they had one daughter named Jeanette in honor of her loving mother.

Their large house was sold in 1957 to Delia Martinez, who operated an import dress company there until 2004. One hundred and one of her photos survived and are preserved in the George Eastman House Museum. Her thousands of negatives are presumed lost or destroyed and have never surfaced. The house where she took so many photos still stands, and the house directly across the street seen in the background of many of her photos still does, as well, engulfed by the development of the 21st century all around them. (originally published Sept. 19, 2013)

Brief History: Culver Service & Culver Pictures Inc.

All of these vintage press prints taken by Jeanette Bernard originated from the Culver Service and Culver Pictures Inc. This photo agency was founded by American collector David Jay Culver (1902-1968) in 1926. His obituary in the New York Times quoted him on how the business concern began: …“with a borrowed filing cabinet full of theatrical photographs. When he moved to 660 First Avenue, one-time location of the Kips Bay Brewing Company, 50 tons of files had to be transferred. It took three days.” (9.) “In 42 years of collecting, Mr. Culver accumulated 6.5 million photographs, prints, posters and woodcuts…” (10.) The article stated that in the trade, the Culver archive was “judged by many as the largest.” (11.)

These photographs have a wonderfully documented origin story involving Culver woven into a 1953 biography on the life of the artist:

“Mrs. Jeanette Bernard, a devoted amateur photographer who, for ten years or more, kept a detailed camera record of her family’s life in their quiet neighborhood in the Borough of Queens shown at left. Mr. D. Jay Culver acquired hundreds of her glass negatives from a dealer in old glass about fifteen years ago- a collection which gives an unsurpassed picture of middle-class life at the turn of the century. Unfortunately he has no record of what street the Bernard’s lived on or who the people in the pictures are.” (12.)

With this evidence, the original Bernard glass plate negatives, made c. 1900-1920, were acquired by Culver Service c. 1935-40, with corresponding prints made from them by Culver around this time, although its possible some prints are older, having come from other sources: newspaper archives, etc. which Culver purchased after 1926. Most of the prints held by this archive have multiple Culver stamps, stickers and publishing marginalia on their versos.

For those collectors seeking general guidance on the dating of Culver press prints, the following helpful reply in 2013 in response to a collector by Harriet Culver- David Jay Culver’s daughter- is helpful in dating Culver stamped prints in general:  “Thanks for asking us about our rubber stamp. This particular stamp was in use between about 1960, when we changed the company name from Culver Service to Culver Pictures Inc., until the institution of the zip code in 1963. As you have guessed, the pictures were stamped on the back the day they were loaned out for reproduction. Therefore it is impossible to use the date of the stamp to date the image itself, since the still might have been sitting in a folder since the 1930’s or 40’s and still get the rubber stamp used in the early sixties.” (13.)

Notes

1. Jeanette Wilhelmine Vogt: Pennsylvania Vital Records: Births & Christenings, 1709-1950. Accessed on FamilySearch in August, 2025
2. 1880 US Census, Accessed on FamilySearch in August, 2025. A younger brother, Austin Vogt, died at 8 years of age in 1864.
3. 1850 US Census, Accessed on FamilySearch in August, 2025. Two years later in 1852, the family moved to Philadelphia. The publication Church’s Bazarre for the August 7th issue advertised pianos manufactured by George Vogt, with his showroom/factory located at No. 68 North Fourth St. in Philadelphia: “They are pronounced to be Superior in Sweetness, Power, and Beauty of Tone, and of UNEQUALLED WORKMANSHIP.”
4. Rates for 10 weeks of instruction: private: $30. or classes: $15. Elementary Class for Children, per month, $5. (other ads show the school was active until at least 1891) (school listed in Sept. 1882 at 19 East 14th) “Vogt Mfg. Co.”
4a. Census records reveal Minnie Fennel was born in New York, and may have been orphaned at birth since earlier christening records and parentage are lacking. She appears by herself in the 1890 New York City Police Census as well as the 1892 Long Island City Census, taken on Feb. 16, where she is enumerated as living in Newtown, Queens. (now Elmhurst)
5. This home, which may have been purchased by 1900, was located at 115 Burroughs Avenue. (now 50-05 66th St. in Woodside, Queens)
6. Guthrie, Jami, “Jeanette Bernard And American Amateur Photography Contests In The Early Twentieth Century” (2010). Theses and dissertations. Paper 1385. (Ryerson University & George Eastman House) p.1
7. Ibid, pp. 1-2
8. Some of the photographs may be by the hand of Bernard’s daughter Minnie Keyser, although this archive has chosen to group them all under Jeanette Bernard for the sake of consistency.
9. Excerpt: Obituary: David J. Culver, The New York Times, March 23, 1968.
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Excerpt: Atlee Kouwenhoven, 1953, Jeanette Bernard biography: The Columbia historical portrait of New York: an essay in graphic history in honor of the tricentennial of New York City and the bicentennial of Columbia University, Doubleday:  p. 443.
13. Nitrateville Blog: Re: Dating the “Culver Pictures Inc.” stamp by BuccaneerBird : Thu May 23, 2013. All of the Bernard photographs are Ferrotyped, gelatin silver prints (evident by their high gloss, with London’s National Portrait Gallery describing the process: “All old photographic papers had a special glossy emulsion and by pressing into firm contact with a smooth surface when drying, the fibres of the gelatin became compressed and formed a smooth glossy print surface.”)