The Portraiture of Carrie Smith Lorraine, Sheffield's First Woman Photographer
Joanna Jennings, the Society Administrator, will present a power point
presentation on the portraiture of Carrie Smith Lorraine, Sheffield's first professional woman photographer, at the meeting of the Sheffield Historical Society on Friday, April 10, at 7:30 pm in Dewey Memorial Hall.
Carrie Smith Lorraine (1868-1935) was a semi-professional photographer who captured picture portraits of guests who came to stay at her family's boarding house, Orchard Shade, located on Maple Avenue (now the Sheffield Inn). Lorraine's mother, Eliza Hubbel Smith (1842-1915) started the business in 1888 and it remained in the family for nearly a century and through three generations. According to an 1896 Berkshire Courier news article about Lorraine's photography, her first efforts were "quite a success."
An early "self photograph" of Carrie Smith Lorraine (1868-1935), Sheffield's first professional woman photographer. Leaving behind an extensive glass plate negative collection which the Society preserves in its archives, she captured many of the historic views of Sheffield that we are familiar with today.
Soon an advertisement announcing that souvenir postal cards with Berkshire views were her specialty appeared alongside that of the Inn's. Lorraine went on to document local architecture; domestic and pastoral scenes; portraits of individuals, families and workers; town and travel scenes; animals and agriculture; and transportation and school children, creating a composite portrait of life during a transitional period in Sheffield history. The Sheffield Historical Society is much indebted to the 1000 glass plate negatives that she left behind as the collection makes up the significant portion of its photographic archives for the town.
The Society featured an exhibit of Ms. Lorraine's work in 2000 called Sheffield: Through the Lens of Carrie Smith Lorraine (1869-1935), which traveled between Dewey Memorial Hall and the Bushnell-Sage Library. While this presentation will cover some of the same material, the focus of it will be less on the town itself and more on the tradition of Victorian & Edwardian Portrait Photography and the accomplishments of a working-class woman during this period.
While the program will navigate Smith family genealogy using this pictorial record, it will appeal to Sheffield families and photo-historians alike as it will also examine early photographic processes and technologies as they relate to Ms. Lorraine's photographic oeuvre. We will address why Ms. Lorraine's oeuvre was significant locally and how it compared to the work of other women artists of her day, including Julia Margaret Cameron, Lady Clementina Hawarden, both of England, and the Allen Sisters of Deerfield, MA.
Joanna Jennings, a Berkshire transplant and new resident of Sheffield, is an award-winning visual artist who studied Photography at Bard College at Simon's Rock. She has exhibited her work in local and regional non-profit venues, most notably at the Delaware Arts Alliance in Narrowsburg, NY and Artists for Art Gallery in Scranton, PA, while last year she held a solo-exhibition in Sheffield in the Gallery at the Old Stone Store.
Ms. Jennings became interested in local history and the decorative arts when she completed an internship at the Bidwell House Museum in Monterey, where she now assists the director. She is also the Administrator of Sheffield Historical Society and serves as a consultant for New Marlborough Historical Society.
All Society programs are free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. If unfamiliar with Sheffield and its environs, Dewey Memorial Hall is the historic building located on the Green, immediately south of the Sheffield post office. For more information about this program, please contact the Sheffield Historical Society at (413) 229-2694 or visit us on the web at www.sheffieldhistory.org.
