Mary Devens (17 May 1857 – 13 March 1920) was an American photographer who was considered one of the ten most prominent

pictorial An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

photographers of the early 20th century. She was listed as a founding member of Alfred Stieglitz’s famed

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 ...

Life

Devens was born on 17 May 1857 in Ware, Massachusetts, the daughter of Arthur Lithgow Devens and Agnes Howard White Devens. She grew up in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

and developed an interest in photography sometime in early life. She had a strong interest in printing techniques that could be manipulated by the photographer, including ozotype,

gum bichromate Gum bichromate is a 19th-century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromates. It is capable of rendering painterly images from photographic negatives. Gum printing is traditionally a multi-layered printing process, ...

and

platinum printing Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Platinu ...

. She mastered the gum bichomate process so well that she gave a lecture on it to the Cambridge Photographic Club in 1896. At some point before her mid-30s, Devens met Boston photographer F. Holland Day, who influenced her career through encouragement and advocacy of her work. He personally submitted five of her prints to the London Photographic Salon of 1898 and was responsible for introducing her to photographer Alfred Stieglitz, with whom she would regularly correspond for many years. Day also promoted her work in his famous lecture "Photography as Fine Art" at the Harvard Camera Club in 1900 and included several of her prints in his 1901 exhibition “The New School of American Photography.” Devens traveled to Europe in 1900-1901, and there she met

Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography. Steichen was credited with tr ...

and

Robert Demachy Robert Demachy (1859–1936) was a prominent French Pictorial photographer of the late 19th and early 20th century. He is best known for his intensely manipulated prints that display a distinct painterly quality. Life Early years (1859–1875) ...

. Demachy was so impressed with her work that he added several of her photographs to the important Paris exhibition of women photographers organized by

Frances Benjamin Johnston Frances Benjamin Johnston (January 15, 1864 – May 16, 1952) was an early American photographer and photojournalist whose career lasted for almost half a century. She is most known for her portraits, images of southern architecture, and various ...

. In 1902 Devens was elected to Britain’s

Linked Ring The Linked Ring (also known as "The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring") was a British photographic society created to propose and defend that photography was just as much an art as it was a science, motivated to propelling photography further into t ...

, and Stieglitz listed her as a founding member of the

. That same year Stieglitz also listed her as one of the ten most prominent American pictorial photographers in an article in ''Century Magazine''. He also published one of her photographs in his famous journal

Camera Work ''Camera Work'' was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a ...

. About this same time Devens’ eyesight began to fail rapidly due to an unknown cause. After 1904 she showed only a few prints in exhibitions, although Stieglitz included her work in the inaugural exhibition at his

Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession Little is a synonym for small size and may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Little'' (album), 1990 debut album of Vic Chesnutt * ''Little'' (film), 2019 American comedy film *The Littles, a series of children's novels by American author John P ...

in 1905. She is not known to have engaged in any photographic activity after 1905. Devens died on 13 March 1920 in Cambridge. A memorial exhibition of her work was held soon after her passing in 1920 by the Society of Arts and Crafts.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Devens, Mary 1857 births 1920 deaths 19th-century American photographers 20th-century American photographers People from Ware, Massachusetts Artists from Massachusetts Pictorialists 20th-century American women photographers 19th-century American women photographers