Portland Camera Club records

On May 24, 1899, 36 charter members formed the Portland Camera Club (PCC) in Portland, Maine. The club rented its first space at 571½ Congress Street in 1903, and outfitted the rooms with a portrait camera and studio, darkroom, and exhibition space. In 1909, the Portland Society of Art (PSA), a group of professional and amateur artists newly-based in the McClellan-Sweat mansion, invited the PCC to merge with their society. For the next 55 years, PCC was the Photographic Section of the PSA and met on the third floor of the mansion.

In the early years of the club, lantern slides were the favored medium of members. Projected onto a screen, and sometimes hand painted, they could be colorful and luminous. During this period, many members experimented with pictorialism, a technique that emphasized the artistry of photography and was characterized by soft focus, low contrast, and added texture. By the late 1920s, however, the salon print was the preferred format and club members were moving away from pictorialism.

From its inception, the PCC held weekly meetings at which members shared and commented on each other’s work. Regular salons (juried competitions) were held with other regional and national clubs, including those forming the New England Camera Club Council. Salon prints were mailed around the country for exhibits and competitions, amassing stickers on mat backs that tracked the prints’ journeys. In the 1950s, PCC hosted an international salon, a major undertaking for the club. By 1964, the club had amicably dissolved its relationship with the PSA, today’s Portland Museum of Art, and eventually moved to South Portland.

Today, the club remains one of the oldest camera clubs in the United States. Members still meet weekly for much of the year.

The collection highlights the work and contributions of five PCC members and one additonal Maine photographer.

Francis Orville Libby (1881-1961). A nationally renowned photographer and Maine's leading pictorialist, Libby was a member of the PCC from 1907 until his death, and club president for a time. A fine arts graduate of Princeton University, he was also a prolific painter. A collection of his prints was held for decades by the PCC; some are now part of the PMA's collection. For more information about Libby, see The Libby prints on the PCC website, which includes a slideshow featuring some of his images and a biographical article by Dave Kirkwood.

Leyland C. Whipple (1881-1970). Leyland Whipple was a Bangor, Maine, photographer, long-time PCC member, composer, high school band leader, and quality control technician at the Portland Company. In his youth, he was a flautist with the Boston Latin School orchestra and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mandolin club.

Ethel Wight (1885-1975). The first woman to join the PCC, in 1932, Ethel Wight was an artist and photographer. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and worked at the Kahill Photo Studio. In 1934, she opened her own studio, Wight Studio, on Congress Street. In 1927, she photographed Charles Lindbergh with this plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, shortly after his historic transatlantic flight (see Box 29 for a reproduction print of this image).

Edward T. Richardson (1921-2016). Edward Richardson was a Bowdoin College graduate, attended the University of Paris after serving overseas during WWII, and graduated from Northeastern University Law School in 1950. During his many decades practicing law in Portland, Richardson focused on conservation and served on the boards of various land conservation organizations. A passionate photographer and active PCC member for over 50 years, Richardson served as president, treasurer, and trustee over the years, and was recipient of the club's lifetime achievement award.

David A. Kirkwood (1934-2023). David Kirkwood grew up in Summit, New Jersey. He attended Northwestern University and served in the US Army in Germany after graduation. There he met and married Lila Harris, a US Army librarian. After raising their children in New Jersey, David and Lila moved to Portland, Me., and joined the PCC. Kirkwood spent eight years researching and writing the history of the club, publishing Seeking the magic light: a chronicle of the first hundred years of the Portland, Maine Camera Club in 2023. Much of the material in this collection was gathered and preserved by him.

The lantern slides in Sub-series 4.2 were created by the following photographer whose collection was gifted to PCC, though he was not a member.

Dr. Frederick E. Pottle (1865-1933). Dr. Pottle was born in Bangor, Me. A dentist, he lived in Europe for over two decades, returning to live in Yarmouth, Me., in the late 1920s. While in Europe, Dr. Pottle created hundreds of hand-colored lantern slides which he left to his sister, Alice Pottle Hart. Alice Hart eventually gifted the slides to Irma Sawyer, who presented them to the PCC in the late 1970s.