Being there . . . . in Celebration of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month to
peruse, discern, and appreciate the aesthetic efforts of female photographers in the United
States between 1850 and 1900. Writes distinguished Katherine Manthorne, an intellectually
keen, gifted aesthete-authoress, “In my ‘Women in the Dark – – Female Photographers In the
US, 1850 – 1900’, join us in recovering the stories of long-overlooked American women who, at
a time when women rarely worked outside the home, became commercial photographers and
shaped the new, challenging medium. Covering two generations of photographers ranging from
New York City to California’s mining districts, this study goes beyond a broad survey and
explores individual career through primary sources and new materials.” For us hungry tyro-
apprentices, Katherine is an unexpected God-sent godmother sponsoring our baptisms in
knowledge and understanding of not only the forgotten and ignored women who most
certainly were on a par, if not better, than their male counterparts, but also about landscape art
across the Americas and the contribution of women to 19 th century American art and culture. As
an art history professor having taught at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, she
has lectured as an honored visiting professor in Venice, Copenhagen, and Berlin. Her
internationally respected books include two favorites of our American women, “Home on the
Hudson: Women and Men Painting Landscape, 1825-1875” (Boscobel, 2009), and “Restless
Enterprise: The Art & Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex” (University of California Press, 2020).
BY 1899, OUR NATION WAS STRETCHED TO ITS FULL SIZE. YET ACADEMICIANS, TONGUE IN
CHEEK, REFERRED TO HER AS BEING IN AN “AWKWARD AGE”. ACUTELY SELF-CONSCIOUS
AMERICANS IN THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES STANDING ON THE HISTORICAL CENTURY LINE FELT
A MAGNIFICENT SENSE OF DRAMA WAS IN THE AIR. RESTLESS AND EXPERIMENTAL, OUR
FEMALE AUTHORS AND ARTISTS, ESPECIALLY, SHARED NOT ONLY IN THE “AWKWARD AGE’S”
PERIOD OF REBELLION, GENERAL UNCERTAINTY, AND EXPERIMENTATION, BUT ALSO ITS
VITALITY, GROWTH, AND DEVELOPMENT. WOMEN MADE THEMSELVES HEARD LOUD AND
CLEAR ON THE PRINTED PAGE, OR IN PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS VIA COLOR, OIL,
WATERCOLOR, OR PENCIL, ESPECIALLY IF PRINTED WORDS COMMINGLED WITH CRAFTED
PHOTOGRAPHS WHEN POSITIONED NEXT TO THEM. HENCE, THE TITLE OF HENRY JAME’S
FAMOUS NOVEL OF 1899, “THE AWKWARD AGE”, SUITED ADMIRABLY.
“WOMEN IN THE DARK – – Female Photographers in the U.S., 1850 – 1900”, by Katherine
Manthorne. Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.: 2020, 9 ½” x 10 ¾”, 143 pages, + more than 80 b&w
photos, $45. Visit, www.schifferbooks.com.
Reviewed and recommended by Don DeNevi
Profiles of the photographers illustrate their careers by exploring how they began, what their
studios looked like from within, what the details were of running their own studios, and what
each studio’s visual output was annually. Their featured photos varied in form – –
daguerreotype, tintype, carte de visite, and more – – subjects included mostly Civil War
portraits, postmortem photography, and landscape photography. Katherine Manthorne
continues, “This welcome resource fills in gaps in photographic American women’s history and
convincingly lays out the parallels between the growth of photography as an available medium
and the late-19 th -century women’s movement.”
The Table of Contents divides the rich, meticulously researched, well-documented
information into eight segments, Introduction; the Pioneers & Evolving Photographic
Techniques; the Civil War Era; Family Matters; A Visit to A Women’s Portrait Studio; Outdoors:
Landscape & Architecture; The New Woman & Women’s Rights; and, Conclusion, “A New
Photographic Era Dawns: “The Kodak Girl”. Two excellent Appendices are also thoughtfully
included, 1.“How a Woman Makes Landscape Photographs” by Eliza W. Washington.
“Philadelphia Photographer”, 1876, and 2. “What a Woman Can Do with a Camera” by Frances
Benjamin Johnston. “Ladies Home Journal,” 1897.
On an open more personal note, Katherine, regarding your inevitable future book design
improvements, please allow this reviewer-author of over 80 titles to friendly suggest, (1.) you
must never allow your book of splendid narrative-style writing acquiesce to design-layout
editors arguing on behalf of “postage-stamp” size photos. in this one, not even digitized or
laser-scanned for crystal-clear sharpness. Here, photos are placed in the easy flowing text so
reduced in size from the original that the faces of the human being participants represented are
hardly distinguishable! (2) then, insist your publisher add a quality removeable magnifying glass
from a pocket in the Appendices as a gift to read the miniature print in your extraordinary
bibliography and precious notes.
