1351
Raquette River, At Sweeney Carry, albumen print @1888, Ad-
irondack Museum. Horicon Sketching Club [Lake George],
albumen print, Adirondack Museum. Liberty Enlightening the
World, multiple magnesium fl ash, albumen print @1890,
Chapman Historical Museum of Glens Falls-Queensbury Histori-
cal Association. Inc.
Further Reading
Adler, Jeanne Winston, Early Days in the Adirondacks: The
Photographs of Seneca Ray Stoddard, New York: Henry N.
Abrams, 1997.
Crowley, William, Seneca Ray Stoddard: Adirondack Illustrator,
Blue Mountain Lake, New York: The Adirondack Museum,
1982.
De Sormo, Maitland C., Seneca Ray Stoddard: Versatile Cam-
era-Artist, Saranac Lake, New York: Adirondack Yesteryears,
1972.
John Fuller, “The Collective Vision and Beyond-8eneca Ray
Stoddard’s Photography, History of Photography, vol. II,
no. 3, July-September, 1987, 217–227. John Fuller, “Seneca
[Ray] Stoddard and Alfred Stieglitz: The Lake George Con-
nection,” History of Photography, vol. 19, no. 2, Summer
1995, 150–158.
Stoddard, S. R., The Adirondacks: Illustrated (1874), Glens Falls,
New York: Chapman Historical Museum, 1983.
Stoddard, Seneca Ray, Old Times in the Adirondacks, edited by
Maitland C. De Sormo, Saranac Lake, New York: 1971.
Welling, William, Photography in America: The Formative Years
1989–1900, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1978.
Wilmerding, John, American Light: The Luminist Movement,
1850–1875, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1989.
STONE, SIR JOHN BENJAMIN
(1838–1914)
In the seemingly casual context of the life of a Victorian
gentleman, John Benjamin Stone was a wonder and
perhaps the most prolifi c photographic recorder of his
generation. He dealt with the way things looked and has
left us with a huge archive of 25,000 images. The work
is simply remarkable. That Stone is not more celebrated
should be a national shame for he presented England
with its history, perceived from a Victorian standpoint.
He also showed the world to England—he was a great
traveller.. In short, Sir Benjamin was a man of means
and a great character.
The means came from inheritance and his own
abilities as an industrialist, the character from a sense
of duty. Stone was fi rst a member of Birmingham City
Council, later a Tory member of Parliament for East
Birmingham, a seat he held for 15 years.. Stone came
from a well-to-do Midlands family and was knighted
in 1886. In hindsight we can mark his career as one of
power and service to the community, but he excelled in
his passion—photography.
His interest began through collecting the works of
others and later developed into his own practice as an
enthusiastic taker of photographs. Stone’s zeal can be
judged by his output. In the City of Birmingham library
sit 19,174 contact prints from his whole plate nega-
tives, 3,045 enlargements, 14,000 negatives and 2,500
lantern slides. They were given in 1921 by the Trustees
of Stone’s estate. During his lifetime Stone had made a
handsome gift of 1200 prints to the British Museum. and
various Midland’s institutions. Given his combination of
wealth and industry, Stone chose three paths. The paths
were crucial to his work at and away from Parliament,
because he chose to picture the evident, not the inciden-
tal. His was a sense of history which he saw vanishing
as Britain became increasingly industrialised He could
be placed as a late taker of the spirit of William Morris
and the ‘Art & Craft’ movement. He pictured the look
of things but avoided what was obvious. One strand lay
in compiling a ‘National Photographic Record’ which
documented English customs and traditions, another
was a visual account of his time in Parliament and the
third was aan extended photographic journal of his
travels—he was adventurous and visited North and
South America, most of Europe, China, India, Ceylon
(as Sri Lanka was then known), the West Indies, South
Africa and Japan. And all over Britain. One can only
be impressed at how prolifi c he was. Stone was a visual
sociologist, though not in a systematic sense, and tried
to gather up an individual analysis of the world. That
said, he did not underestimate his worth; he amassed
38 albums of press cuttings, now in the Birmingham
library, which give a good view of his abilities as a
self-publicist.
The ‘National Photographic Record’ was originally
proposed by Jerome Harrison in 1892. Stone knew
Harrison through his involvement with the Warwick-
shire Photographic Survey; Sir Benjamin was the fi rst
President of the Birmingham Photographic Society and
the Warwickshire project gave rise to grander ambitions
which were nothing less than an audit of ‘Life and His-
tory’ made clear in pictures. It should be said, however,
that he took up photography quite simply because no
one else was taking pictures of the things he thought
to be of value, so he was unable to buy them. Thus he
learned how to make them for himself and history. It
was to become a work of stature. He stored his glass
plates carefully in two specially built out-houses in his
back garden because of a personal conviction that the
past might inform the future. Sir Benjamin planned
three books to cover his work as a photographer. Two
were published by Casssell, London. No date appears in
the books though 1903 might be close. In typical style
they were called ‘Sir Benjamin Stone’s Pictures.” They
covered his images of the enactments and ceremonies
of British folklore and his documents of the people of
Parliament. These two volumes were very handsomely
produced. The third, on his travel pictures, was not
published, which is a shame as he was an acute observe