Last week Chris and I spent two nights but only one full day in Albuquerque, having gone there originally only to go back to one of our old favorite museums, the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.  Chris and I first stopped there back in 1992, on a 2-week summer tour of the Southwest (a wimpy 2000 miles covered over 2 weeks, as I recall, compared to the 2000+ miles that we just did in 4 days); that  was a trip where we stopped at a variety of museums and national parks along the way. Anyway, 20+ years later we were again impressed by their exhibits on ancient Southwest native american cultures, including  the Anasazi and the Mimbres. The Maxwell is tiny, but it still does a nice job of presenting the interesting points, pottery and similarities/differences between the groups.

However, we got a bit sidetracked before going to the Maxwell, as I had an appointment with the curator of a photo archive at a different museum in Albuquerque. It all came together rather suddenly. You see, I had visited photo archives while we Santa Fe, part of my current quest to track down American women photographers from 1850-1920 for a book I’m planning to write.

Before you ask — yes, it’s true that women really were doing photography as early as 1850. As it turns out,  there were a fair number of women who ran successful photography studios in mid-to-late 1800s, in addition to “talented amateurs” who took up photography as a serious hobby. It’s just no one every talks about these women much, and  few people know about them. Even some photo archivists I have talked with, if they don’t happen to have any examples in their archive, doubt that there were women doing photography this early. But it’s true – there were.

Anyway, while we were in Santa Fe, I visited the Palace of the Governors Photo Archive (POGPA). From the archivists there, I got the names of several women who were active in the area during my time period, and there are photos by these women in the archives there.

But there was a bit of a mystery there, too. You see, there was a poster was on display of a photo of a woman advertising  a photography studio:

Advertisement for Cobb’s Studio (photo courtesy of  the Albuquerque City Museum Photo Archives)

I had just learned (from the staff) that Cobb’s studio was run by a husband and wife team, William and Eddie Cobb.  Eddie Ross was a photographer in her own right, having worked for another photography studio in town (also run by a woman!) before she married a rival studio owner, William Cobb.  Anyway, it seemed clear to the staff at POGPA that the man with the camera on the banner was William Cobb, and they suspected that the woman was Eddie Cobb herself.  But oddly,  no one at POGPA seemed to know where the photo had come from, nor how to find the original photo.  The POGPA curator did finally give me contact information for his counterpart at a museum in Albuquerque, so I fired off an email to that man at the Albuquerque museum just after we got to town late in the day on Monday.

10 minutes later my phone rings — it’s the guy in Albuquerque calling me to follow-up! He explains that he is actually not sure about what the story is with that particular photo, as he’s not familiar with it either. But he promises to have an answer by 10am the next morning if I can stop by then.

So the next day,  by the time we get there, sure enough he has managed to track down the photo, which turns out to be in his archives, but neither digitized nor completely catalogued yet. He’s puzzled how POGPA came to have a poster-sized enlargement on the wall next to the curator’s desk in Santa Fe, but at least he’s tracked down the photo.  He’s also got information that indicates that the photos pinned to the the woman’s dress are photos of Eddie and William’s children.

Plus he pulls out a few other photos for me to look at while I’m there by Eddie Cobb and the woman she worked for before she got married, and shows me a tiny part of an exhibit at the museum about the Cobb Studio. A fun and productive morning, all set in motion by the mystery about the photo.

But the story doesn’t end there. Later that night, while searching the Internet, I happened across a notice of periodic lectures in Albuquerque given by a women who is the former photo curator of that same museum. Her lectures are all about the exact women I was researching at the POGPA and in Albuquerque. Chris and I weren’t able to find an email address for her that night, so Chris looked in the phone book (online) and found a phone number for a woman by the same name in town. The next morning before we leave town I take a chance and call the number. Yup, it’s the right woman!  During my conversation with her, it becomes clear to me that a) the man at the museum in Albuquerque has already told her all about me, including my name  b) she was the one who knew what that “mystery” photo was and c) she probably told him how to find it in the archives to show me. What a great resource she will be going forward, too – what fun to find her!

Anyway, that’s an example of how interesting and an unexpected this search for early American women photographers from 1850-1920 has been so far.  The hunt continues … with the hope for this amount serendipity to continue along the way.