Upcoming Exhibits

Photographs by Charles E. Moody

January 15-February 24, 2011
Photography, invented in the 1830s and popularized in the 1840s, grew to maturity as the 19th century turned into the 20th. Americans were especially attracted to the technological wizardry of photography, as well as its seemingly democratic nature. After all, one didn't have to be a trained artist to take a photograph. Maine, in particular, was a center of photography around the turn of the century. Growing out of Maine's key role in the invention of photography (Saco native John Johnson helped to create one of the world's first daguerreotype cameras in 1839, which is now in the collection of the Saco Museum) and further inspired by Maine's unique blend of idyllic landscapes and modern industrial scenes, late 19th- and early 20th-century photographers gravitated toward this state. F. Holland Day, Gertrude Kasebier, Paul Strand, and Clarence White are just a few of the luminaries from that era who produced significant bodies of work in Maine.

Yet Maine had its native photographers as well. By the late 19th century, anyone could buy a camera and a box of glass plate negatives at the corner store (one brand of glass plate negatives, the Stanley Dry Plate, was actually invented by Mainers F.E. and F.O. Stanley). The new cameras were lighter and more portable than the giant wooden boxes of earlier decades, and even a child could learn how to snap the shutter and capture an image on film. But despite the growing popularity of photography, there were still few formal academic programs in the art form, so most photographers, professional and amateur, were essentially self-taught. As one might anticipate, many photographers produced images that, while they may be valuable records of their time and place, are no more sophisticated than the snapshots that fill so many family albums today. Others, however, transcended the documentary abilities of the medium to create photographs of astonishing quality, capturing the beauty, humor, and contrasts of this idiosyncratic state. Photographer Charles E. Moody of Saco, Maine, was one of the latter.

Charles Moody was born to Samuel F. Moody and Mary E. Spencer of Saco in 1859, and he died on August 10, 1915 in his home at 98 Spring Street. The years in between are not well recorded. His obituary states that he worked for many years in a varnish factory in Newark, New Jersey, but had given it up because of ill health. Perhaps this was the reason that Moody found himself back in his hometown in his middle years; perhaps, too, it was his inability "to pursue any active employment" that led him to photography at that same time. Indeed, the 1913 Saco Directory lists him as a photographer, operating out of his widowed mother's home on 57 Scamman Street. It was out of this studio that he produced some of the loveliest, most poignant, and most thought-provoking images ever taken of the cities on the Saco.

The exhibition of Moody's work to be held at the Saco Museum in 2011 provides the opportunity to delve more deeply into Moody’s history and to try to piece together a biography for this remarkable early photographer. But Moody's photographs, more than anything else, speak to his interests and passions as a man and a photographer, and his original glass plate negatives endure to this day in the collections of the Dyer Library, Saco Museum, and McArthur Library. Together, they demonstrate Moody's distinctive talent for capturing the people, places, and stories of this area.

Out of hundreds of Moody's original glass-plate negatives in the collections of the Dyer Library, Saco Museum, and McArthur Library, approximately 75 will be printed for this exhibition and displayed alongside early camera equipment, from the Saco Museum's collections, of the type Moody would have used. The exhibition will open on Saturday, January 15, with an opening reception at the Saco Museum on Friday evening, January 14. Various programs and family activities will take place at the Dyer Library, Saco Museum, and McArthur Public Library through the close of the exhibition on February 24, including photo workshops, lectures, and more. A gallery guide with information about Moody's life and career will also be produced in conjunction with the exhibition and will be available at the Saco Museum.

Photo: An artist at work on the banks of the Saco River, circa 1914, photo by Charles E. Moody, Courtesy McArthur Public Library, Biddeford.