Stanley’s shooter> Inventors’ sister gaining reputation as photographer

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Chansonetta Stanley Emmons had a different focus on life from most women of her time. She viewed her surroundings through the lens of a camera and captured them on the dry plates developed for photography by her famous inventor brothers, F.O. and F.E. Stanley.

While her brothers gained fame in their lifetimes for their Stanley Steamer automobile, Emmons was viewed as little more than a woman who pursued a hobby in photography and called herself an artist.

Now, 60 years after her death, Emmons is gaining recognition for the quality and historical perspective of her work, and her independent pioneering spirit.

The University of Maine Farmington Art Gallery opened a new exhibit of Emmons’ work this month with a treasure trove of photographs discovered two years ago at Farmington’s Cutler Library. The gallery was among the first to feature Emmons’ photography wtih a 1991 exhibit based on the collection of her work held by the Stanley Museum in Kingfield, the Stanleys’ hometown.

The 1995 discovery included 200 prints of Emmons’ work that had been packaged in preparation for a long-ago juried exhibit in Boston and then forgotten. Some of these images had never been seen before, particularly scenes of Europe.

“The selection and treatment thus reflects the artist’s choice, almost as if she were to curate her own exhibit,” said Sue Davis, director of the Stanley Museum.

Davis has come to know Emmons on a personal level, having worked with the Stanley Museum and its varied collections since it began in 1981.

“She pulls you in,” Davis said of the photographer. “The public is demanding more and more information about her.

“I feel a personal connection with her that comes from personal relationships with her family, and her work,” continued the museum director. “I’ve come to have a good handle on the shiny spots in her personality and some of the duller, not as interesting points.”

Davis described Emmons as a determined woman who set her goals as a teen-ager when she told her brother that art would bring her greatness. Despite that determined spirit, Emmons didn’t think of herself as a pioneer in her field, or a pioneer for women, Davis believes.

“When we look back, we take too much of the present context to interpret the past in present terms,” Davis said. “My sense of early pioneer women is they had an agenda, a mission. They did it and didn’t feel sorry for themselves, and didn’t dwell on the obstacles.”

Netta, as she was more commonly known, had a sense of pride and confidence in her talents; at the same time, people remembered her as a shy and retiring girl, not one to push herself upon others.

Yet the late Berenice Abbott, a world-reknown photographer from Maine who critiqued Emmons’ work and wrote the introduction to her 1977 biography, said, “Her approach is not a timid one. Photographers must be bold on occasion and dominate the situation. She handled her groups gently and very well. She caught them as naturally as the medium permitted in the still clumsy development of that particular time.”

Emmons’ work is lauded today for the way she captured the everyday life of the late 19th century. Yet even those photographs were romanticized, according to Davis, because Emmons posed many scenes to reflect memories of her childhood.

“She had a story to tell and knew how to do it,” said Davis. “There is so much going on in each one. People linger in front of each photo.”

Davis said that historians who have examined the photos claim that the settings in many of Emmons’ pictures don’t match the time period in which they were actually taken. The scenes are viewed as Emmons’ attempt to chronicle the lifestyle of her childhood, a time when her mother was still alive. Critics put the historical perspective of the photos aside, nonetheless, and focus on Emmons’ achievement in recording an earlier time period and lifestyle with clarity.

Born in 1858, Emmons can be viewed in retrospect as a pioneer for her accomplishments as a woman. At the time, however, she was described as “both modest and demure as the late Victorian period demanded.” She apparently had a strong will, however, as her biographer wrote that Emmons “did not like to be crossed and expected that people and events would suit themselves to her needs and desires.”

“To those who knew her, she was both a mystery and a puzzle,” stated Marius Peladeau, when he published her life story in 1977.

Emmons’ mother died when she was 16, and, as a result, the young girl matured in a male-dominated household, pampered and protected as the little princess of her brothers and father. But she also was influenced by their strength, intellect and vision. Emmons never lacked for self-esteem or faith in her own talents, attributes that created the pioneering spirit for which she is recognized today and that set her apart from her peers.

Teaching was an expected choice of career for unmarried women in her day. That expectation sent Emmons to the Western State Normal School in Farmington, 24 miles south of her hometown, for teacher training. Her introduction to art, though, changed that goal. Emmons tried teaching art and drawing in the Kingfield area until she realized a metropolitan area offered more potential.

Her brother F.E. Stanley had established himself as a “photographer and crayon artist” in the Lewiston-Auburn area. Seeking his help as an artist, Emmons quickly became enthralled with photography. The ultimate success of her brothers, F.E. and F.O., in developing the first mass-produced dry plate process for photography propelled her into an emerging field. When she married at age 29, on the brink of spinsterhood by the standards of the day, her early interest in photography took a back seat. It was an unsettled and unhappy marriage that ultimately brought her back to photography.

The “borderline business skills” of her husband, James N.W. Emmons, prompted her wealthy brothers to come to her rescue. F.O. bought Emmons a house that was the beginning of subsidies provided off and on by her brothers for many years. With her financial worries minimized, if not eliminated entirely, Emmons was able to develop her photographic style and extensive collections, capturing lifestyles from Maine to the Carolinas, west to Colorado and east to Europe.

When she was widowed in 1898, Emmons tried to return to painting and drawing with renewed training. Fate would not let her abandon photography, however, as her chosen art teacher also dabbled in photography and influenced her interest.

Pursuing photography brought her back to Kingfield often, where she captured family and friends in their daily activities, and also placed them in historical scenes reminiscent of her childhood. During trips to the Carolinas, Emmons captured scenes from the poverty-stricken lives of post-Civil War blacks, southern architecture and “touristy” shots of southern lifestyles. She preserved day-to-day living across New England in glass slides and plates, including her own home life with her only daughter, Dorothy.

Emmons made the “Grand Tour” of Europe after 1900, pursuing and photographing architecture in several countries as well as vignettes of the social culture. She photographed majestic landscapes in Colorado and in New England, often using cumbersome tripods and large format box cameras and toting a variety of developing equipment and chemicals.

In Massachusetts, her kitchen became her darkroom. In Kingfield, when she stayed with family members, closets would serve that purpose with water hauled in with buckets from a nearby well.

Her later years were spent preparing and displaying exhibitions and slide shows of her work, usually accompanied by her daughter, who also served as interpreter. By this time, Emmons was “stone deaf,” a condition that caused her to worry more about money matters. Even then, deafness did not diminish her self-reliance or independence, relatives would recall.

During the last four years of her life, Emmons struggled with health problems, always winning the battle until a heart attack at age 79 stole the last of her strength. She died March 18, 1937, and is buried in the Riverside Cemetery at Kingfield.

Her work is featured along with the many inventions of her brothers at the Stanley Museum in Kingfield, although a large number of glass plates and prints remain with private collectors. The exhibit at the UMF Art Gallery is co-sponsored by the Stanley Museum and the Cutler Library. A proposal is in the works to offer a similar exhibit in Colorado.

The UMF Art Galley is open to the public, free of charge, noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday or by appointment. For more information call 778-7001.