Donna Lucey, "Photographing Montana, 1894 - 1924: The Life Works of Evelyn Cameron"
Lectures and Victorian Tea

Schedule

Description

Based on her discovery of a major collection of photographic material and private papers, award-winning writer and photo editor Donna Lucey returns to Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum to give an slide presentation and talk on “Photographing Montana, 1894 – 1928:  The Life Work of Evelyn Cameron”. Lucey will lecture at the historic house on Wednesday, September 1, at 4:00pm, and autograph copies of her book of the same title at a Victorian Tea. This will be the concluding presentation in Ventfort Hall's Summer 2010 Lecture Series.

 

In 1889, British honeymooners Evelyn and Ewen Cameron arrived in the remote badlands of eastern Montana Territory. An unlikely couple in an unlikely place, Evelyn had married Ewen despite her wealthy family’s objections to this naturalist, 14 years her senior with few financial prospects. As Evelyn’s photographs portray, the harsh life of frontier Montana was an extreme contrast to upper class English life. Both Evelyn and Ewen thrilled at the outdoors life and hunting, while the latter carried on his activity as an expert birder. 

 

At the same time that Ewen was having little financial success, Evelyn in 1894 began her pursuit of photography. Although Kodak had developed the “snapshot” by then, Evelyn chose the older and more exacting techniques of dry-plate glass photography. With time she mastered her art, becoming one of the most sought-after photographers in Montana. She continued to chronicle the lives of the people and the cruel reality of daily existence, the variety of wildlife and the dramatic landscape of her adopted homeland until her death in 1928.

 

Lucey's presentation accompanies Ventfort Hall's exhibition titled “Dreaming of the West: Reality and Romance” that opened in May and features Cameron’s nearly forgotten photographs and the mid 20^th century paintings of Native American culture by Alfred G. Vetromile.

 

The exhibition would not have been possible without Lucey’s discovery of Cameron’s work.  In the late 1970’s, while researching a book on women pioneers in the West, Lucey heard about a cache of glass-plate negatives belonging to Janet Williams, a 95-year-old farm woman in eastern Montana. One of the original homesteaders in the area, Williams had been Evelyn’s best friend and surrogate daughter. 

 

On Evelyn’s death, Williams stored away all of her friend’s 1,800’s negatives, 2,500 prints and private papers and resisted all efforts to make them public. Consequently, Evelyn’s work and name was almost entirely unknown. After much persuasion, Williams finally allowed Lucey access to this historical treasure. The result was her book, Photographing Montana 1894-1928: The Life and Work of Evelyn Cameron, which won the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association award for Best Work of Non-Fiction in 1991. She was also script consultant for an award-winning PBS documentary on Cameron.

 

Lucey is currently at work on a book about the lives of five extraordinary women painted by John Singer Sargent. Her most recent biography, Archie & Amelie:  Love and Madness in the Gilded Age, about which she lectured last year at Ventfort Hall, was a finalist as the Best Work of Non-Fiction, as well as the People’s Choice Award, at the 2007 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. Previous books include I Dwell in Possibility: Women Build a Nation, 1600 - 1920 and National Geographic Guide to America’s Great Houses.  Lucey has been interviewed on TV and has been a freelance writer and photo editor for numerous magazines and for several book publishers.

Price

$14 member, $16 non-member