Born 154 years ago today, on 17 May 1857 in Ware, Massachusetts, Mary Devens was considered one of the ten most prominent pictorial photographers of the early 20th century.
She was listed as a founding member of Alfred Stieglitz’s famed Photo-Secession.
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| “The Ferry, Concarneau”, a photograph by Mary Devens, c1904, Camera Work, No 7, 1904
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Devens developed an interest in photography sometime in early life, with a strong interest in printing techniques that could be manipulated by the photographer, including ozotype, gum bichromate and platinum printing. She mastered the gum bichomate process so well that she gave a lecture on it to the Cambridge Photographic Club in 1896.
Mary Devens met Boston photographer F. Holland Day in 1890s, who 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.”
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| Mary Devens – Charcoal Effect. Photogravure published in Camera Notes, 1902, c1901, Camera Notes, Vol 6 No 1, July 1902 |
In 1900-1901, several of her photographs were added to the important Paris exhibition of women photographers organized by Frances Benjamin Johnston.
In 1902 Devens was elected to Britain’s Linked Ring, and Stieglitz listed her as a founding member of the Photo-Secession. That same year Stieglitz also listed her as one of the ten most prominent American pictorial photographers in an article in Century Magazine.
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 in augural exhibition at his Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession in 1905. She is not known to have engaged in any photographic activity after 1905.
Devens died on 13 March 1920 in Cambridge.