Adirondack Photography: Seneca Ray Stoddard

Kobor in the Adirondacks

   
     As many will notice, there is an attempt here to view and examine history through the lens of a camera. Living in the foothills of the Adirondack's shadows, it's hard not to wonder who the first chroniclers of the mountains were, besides the original inhabitants of the area. One such individual is Seneca Ray Stoddard, a naturalist, artist an photographer who captured over 2,000 images of the region.
 
 Stoddard was born May 13, 1844, in the umbrage of where Grant's Cottage in the Hamlet of Wilton would be, on Mt. McGregor. He had lived there several years before the death of his mother and the subsequent remarriage of his father forced a move to the northern boundary of the Adirondack's.  Before his twentieth birthday, Stoddard again moved, this time to the Albany area where he was to gain employment decorating the inside of railroad coaches and other various decorative signs by painting. It was after this point in his life that he moved up to Glens Falls in an attempt to start his own business painting and decorating for local area businesses.

     

Within a few years, Stoddard had transformed his Glens Falls, Elm St. home into a studio where he was producing photo and artistic renderings of the Adirondack Mountains and the various natural gems within it.  By 1873, after producing one for Saratoga Springs, he produced one of the first, informational pamphlets for tourists, complete with images and maps of the region,"The Adirondack's : Illustrated". He often could be read in the local newspapers, giving his accounts of his journeys into the mountains and lake wilderness.

Whiteface Mt.

 One such description is of Whiteface Mt., and Stoddard also gives a wondrous and uplifting account of his ascent and the guides he met along the way to the summit in, "The Adirondacks."Giving a potential explanation of how Whiteface got its name, "seventy years ago an avalanche of loose stones and the gathered moss and vegetable deposit of ages went down the western slope of this mountain, and the exposed surface whiter than the rest."

    
 Along with the written descriptions of several other area mountains, Stoddard had an overall photo catalog of over 3,000 pictures and his lecture in front of the New York Legislature in 1892 proved influential in helping create the Adirondack Park with Verplanck Colvin. Interestingly enough, a state amendment was required to retain the park, as lobbying efforts from interested industries lobbied intensely to overturn the new legislation. 

     What makes Stoddard's feat even more impressive is that you have to remember the cameras that were being used at the time.   These weren't the little hand held devices of this day and age, but the bigger, boxed types of years gone passed. Certainly a commendable accomplishment of physical caliber, and it  makes you feel tremendously lucky to carry around a little camera.  This luck would include not having to carry around a second camera, the chemicals and plates for developing the photos, as opposed to "developing" them on instagram.
   
     Currently, there is an exhibit at the State Museum in Albany which highlights the many pictures from Stoddard and the adventures in the Adirondack wilderness. It ends soon, so if you're interested I would check it out, before they close it down. http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/exhibits/special/SenecaRayStoddard.cfm. He passed away in Glens Falls in 1917, and there exists a museum near his Elm St. home, called the Chapman Historical Museum. http://chapmanmuseum.org. Approximately half of his photo's can be viewed at the Adirondack Museum, which is located near Blue Mountain Lake. http://www.adkmuseum.org. Surely, through his camera's lens, Stoddard was able to trap the history of the Adirondack's on a photographic plate for many generations to un-trap.