September 20, 2008 – January 4, 2009
IMAGES OF CHILDHOOD: Selected Photographs by Jane Reece North Gallery
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Jane Reece, American EASTER LILLIES (Elinor Sagebiel) 1912, Gelatin silver print, Gift of Miss Jane Reece, 1952.19.49 |
Jane Reece (1868 – 1961) was born near West Jefferson, Ohio. She established her first photography studio in Dayton in 1903. By 1909 she became interested in a style of photography called Pictorialism, a soft-focused, romanticized, impressionistic style that encouraged using and experimenting with lenses, filters, developing processes, and heavy manipulation of the image. It was through Pictorialism that Reece found her muse and she continued to work in this style for the remainder of her career.
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| Jane Reece, American 1868 - 1961 UNTITLED (Southern Pines, North Carolina), c. 1903. Cyanotype on cotton. The Dayton Art Institute, Gift of Miss Jane Reece, 1952.19.406 |
Included in this installation of 34 photographs of children are some of Reece’s earliest work – a pre-Pictoralism series of candid and studio posed cyanotypes on cotton cloth and gelatin silver photographs of African-American children in Southern Pines, North Carolina in 1903 (where she had gone for health reasons).
Portraits of individual children from the Dayton area are also included as well as examples depicting children posed in costumes or scenes reminiscent of Old Master paintings. Reece’s portraits are not mere photo-documentation keepsakes; they engage the viewer mentally and emotionally - whispering possible stories and hinting at the complex minds of the sitters.