Mary Devens

Mary Devens (born May 17, 1857 in Ware , Massachusetts , † March 13, 1920 in Cambridge , Massachusetts) was an American photographer . She is one of the best-known personalities among the Pictorialists and a founding member of the Photo Secession .

The Ferry, Concarneau , 1904

Charcoal drawing effect. Photo engraving, 1902

Life

Mary Devens was the daughter of Arthur Lithgow Devens and Agnes Howard White Devens. She grew up in Cambridge , Massachusetts and discovered her interest in photography early on. She developed a great interest in reproduction techniques that gave the photographer creative freedom; especially the ozotype process , platinum printing and the rubber-bichromate process . She finally mastered the latter so well that she taught it in a course at the Cambridge Photographic Club in 1896 .

At the age of a little over 30 she met the Boston photographer F. Holland Day , who encouraged her in her further career. He submitted five of her photographs to the London Photographic Salon in 1898 and introduced her to Alfred Stieglitz , the influential gallery owner, founder of the American Photo Secession and editor of Camera Work magazine . Day also featured her work in his 1900 Harvard Camera Club lecture Photography as Fine Art , and submitted some of her prints to The New School of American Photography exhibition in 1901 . Mary Devens exchanged letters with Stieglitz for many years.

1900–1901 she traveled to Europe and met Edward Steichen and Robert Demachy there . Demachy was so impressed by her work that he submitted several of them to the exhibition in Paris, organized by Frances Benjamin Johnston , which showed works by women photographers only.

In 1902 she was accepted into the British group of photographers Linked Ring and became one of the founding members of the Photo Secession . That same year, Stieglitz named her one of the ten most influential pictorialist photographers in the United States in an article in Century Magazine . He published her picture The Ferry, Concarneau in 1904 in his magazine Camera Work .

Around this time, her eyesight began to deteriorate for an unknown reason. After 1904 she only showed a few works in exhibitions. Stieglitz included her work in the opening exhibition of Gallery 291 in 1905 . From the time after 1905 there are no more known photographic works by her.

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b ^c Bronwyn AE Griffith: Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 . University Press of New England, Hanover 2001, ISBN 978-0-932171-22-1 , pp. 149-150 .
^ C. Jane Grover: The Positive Image: Women Photographers in Turn of the Century America . SUNY Press, Albany, NY 1988, ISBN 978-0-88706-533-0 , pp. 91 .
↑ Simone Philippi, Ute Kieseyer (Ed.): Alfred Stieglitz. Camera work . Taschen, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8228-3784-9 , pp. 95 .
^ Weston Naef: The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography . Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City 1978, ISBN 978-0-88706-533-0 , pp. 338 .

Web links

Commons : Mary Devens - collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Devens, Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 17, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ware , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH	March 13, 1920
Place of death	Cambridge , Massachusetts

[AOP-1] A ^b ^c Bronwyn AE Griffith: Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 . University Press of New England, Hanover 2001, ISBN 978-0-932171-22-1 , pp. 149-150 .

[2] C. Jane Grover: The Positive Image: Women Photographers in Turn of the Century America . SUNY Press, Albany, NY 1988, ISBN 978-0-88706-533-0 , pp. 91 .

[3] Simone Philippi, Ute Kieseyer (Ed.): Alfred Stieglitz. Camera work . Taschen, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-8228-3784-9 , pp. 95 .

[4] Weston Naef: The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography . Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City 1978, ISBN 978-0-88706-533-0 , pp. 338 .