1349
Further Reading
Ehnenkranz, Anne, Poetic Localities: Photographs of the Ad-
irondacks, Cambridge, Crete, Italy, Athens by William James
Stillman, New York: Aperture, 1988.
Lindquist-Cock, Elizabeth, ‘Stillman, Ruskin and Rossetti: The
Struggle Between Nature and Art,’ in History of Photography,
volume 3 (1979), pp 1–18.
Miller, Frances, Catalogue of the William James Stillman col-
lection. Schenectady: Friends of the Union College Library,
1974.
Stillman, William James, The Acropolis of Athens, Illustrated
Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography. London:
F. S. Ellis, 1870.
——, The Amateurs Photographic Guide Book, Being a Complete
Resumè of the Most Useful Dry and Wet Collodion Processes.
London: C. D. Smith & Co, 1874.
——, Poetic Localities of Cambridge. Boston: James P. Osgood
& Co, 1876.
——, Autobiography of a Journalist. London: Grant Richards,
1901.
STIRN, RUDOLPH AND CARL (active
1880s–1890s)
The Stirn brothers were manufacturers and retailers of
cameras and photographic equipment with their best
known camera being the Concealed Vest camera which
was patented in the United States, Germany and Britain
in 1886.
Stirn’s camera was based on a design by the American
R. D. Gray which he showed in December 1885 and had
refi ned by May 1886. It was patented in July 1886. C.
P. Stirn of the American fi rm Stirn & Lyons purchased
the rights to the camera from Gray and with his brother
Rudolph in Germany began manufacturing the camera
and selling it in October 1886. The camera made six
exposures on a round plate and was hidden behind a vest
or waistcoat with the lens peeking through a buttonhole.
The camera was an immediate success with 18,000 sold
by December 1890. A second model was made larger
to hold more exposures and that appeared in 1888. The
cameras were sold under several different names.
In 1889 Rudolph Stirn made a 360-degree panoramic
camera called the Wonder Panoramic camera designed
by an American J. R. Connon, and patented in that year.
Rudolph Stirn also patented and sold a range of other
camera designs none of which saw the success of the
Concealed Vest camera.
Michael Pritchard
STODDARD, SENECA RAY (1843–1917)
American photographer, guidebook writer, and
lecturer
Stoddard was born 13 May 1843, to Julia Ray Stoddard
and Charles Stoddard of Wilton, New York, nine miles
north of Saratoga Springs. In the late nineteenth century
he was recognized as an outstanding photographer of
the Adirondacks in northern New York State, and late
20th century critics have compared him to famous early
photographers of the American West.
A job from 1862–1864 with the Eaton and Gilbert
Car Works near Troy, New York, taught him landscape
painting in decorating rail cars. From there he moved to
Glens Falls, strategically located between the fashion-
able tourist spots of Lake George and Saratoga Springs.
He learned wet plate collodion photography from a
Glens Falls photographer, and soon began photograph-
ing the Adirondack scenery and selling stereographs
and large mounted albumen prints to tourists.
Complementing his photography were his various
guide books about the Adirondack region. The Ad-
irondacks: Illustrated fi rst appeared in 1874, and went
through various editions until 1914. Wood engravings
based on his photographs were included along with his
own maps. Later editions incorporated photo engrav-
ing. His fi rst wife. Augusta Potter Stoddard, managed
the studio with the help of female relatives, while his
brother-in-law Charles Oblinis accompanied Stoddard
as an assistant.
Hotels and transportation companies, including the
Delaware & Hudson ‘Railroad and the New York & Ca-
nadian Railroad, used Stoddard’s photographs for pro-
motion. In 1878, he headed the Photographic Division
of Verplanck Colvin’s State Survey of the Adirondacks.
Travel involved stage coach, steamboat, railroad, and
sailing canoe. He hiked trails and climbed mountains
to make thousands of photographs of what became the
Adirondack Park in 1892. His slide lecture using oxy-
gen-hydrogen projectors at the New York Assembly in
Albany on 25 February 1892, was a lobbying effort to
securing legislative backing for the park.
In Adirondacks Illustrated, 1874, Stoddard wrote
of his own stereographs on sale at Ausable Chasm:
“The kind universally acknowledged best are known
as the ‘Crystal,’ and sold at $2.50 per dozen...” There
was justifi cation in such a claim, for the E. & H. T.
Anthony & Company of New York distributed these
images widely.
Stoddard generally used cameras ranging from 5 ×
8 inches to 16 × 20 inches, and in the 1880s he turned
to the more convenient dry plate process. He was par-
ticularly adept at arranging people within a landscape
or architectural setting, and his images form a visual
history of middle and upper class vacations. With some
ability in drawing and painting, expert photographic
technique, along with an awareness of art and literature,
he revealed the natural setting with careful framing,
sensitivity to light, form, and detail.
Historians, including Weston Naef and John Wilm-
erding, have linked Stoddard’s work to the category of