George Henry Seeley (1880–1955) was an American photographer primarily associated with the pictorialist movement. Seeley was born in

Stockbridge, Massachusetts Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,018 at the 2020 census. A year-round resort area, Stockbridge is h ...

and attended the

Massachusetts Normal Art School Massachusetts College of Art and Design, branded as MassArt, is a public college of visual and applied art in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1873, it is one of the nation’s oldest art schools, the only publicly funded independent art school ...

from 1897 to 1901, as a student in painting.George Seeley: Winter Landscape
Metropolitan Museum of Art. He studied under

Joseph DeCamp Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (November 5, 1858February 11, 1923) was an American painter and educator. Biography Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he studied with Frank Duveneck. In the second half of the 1870s he went with Duveneck and fellow students ...

, who encouraged his interest in natural light, and became interested in photography after meeting

F. Holland Day Fred Holland Day (23 July 1864—23 November 1933), known professionally as F. Holland Day, was an American photographer and publisher. He was prominent in literary and photography circles in the late nineteenth century and was a leading Pict ...

.George Seeley

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

. He returned to Stockbridge in 1902, where he worked in both painting and photography. In 1904, his photographs were included in the First American Photographic Salon in New York City, where

Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz (January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was kno ...

encountered them; Stieglitz then invited Seeley to join the

Photo Secession The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F. Holland Day in the early 20th century ...

, in which Seeley was a member from 1906 to 1910. After leaving Stieglitz's group, Seeley continued creating in a pictorialist aesthetic while the style as a whole declined in critical praise; this, coupled with wartime shortages in raw materials needed for photography, hurt Seeley's career as a photographer.George H. Seeley
Getty Museum. While Seeley continued exhibiting his photographs until the 1930s, little of what was shown was new material. Later in life, Seeley returned to painting, and also served as a newspaper correspondent for a Stockbridge publication. He died there in 1955.

References

External links

* * George H. Seeley Papers and Photographs. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Seeley, George H. 1880 births 1955 deaths People from Stockbridge, Massachusetts 20th-century American photographers Photographers from Massachusetts Massachusetts College of Art and Design alumni