Pearl Grace Loehr (born September 29, 1882) was an American photographer and arts educator based in New York. Born in Warsaw, Indiana, the daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Loehr,"Child Life Mirrored by Hoosier Girl." Indianapolis Sunday Star, November 13, 1910, p. M1. she was interested in art from the time she was a child. She apprenticed with a local artist, who encouraged her to attend art school in Indianapolis, and she then moved to New York to study at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn."Another Indiana Woman Arrives." Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, May 28, 1911, p. 10. She soon opened her own studio in Brooklyn, and became known as an expert on photographing children and the home.Editorial page, Goshen (IN) Weekly News-Times, October 17, 1913, p. 4. In 1913, she was elected president of the Women's Federation of the Photographers Association of America, and served one term."North Carolina Woman Honored." (Greensboro NC) Everything, July 11, 1914, p. 7. After that, she continued to give lectures, speaking at conventions and conferences."Camera Men to Meet." Washington Post, March 19, 1916, p. 17. She also taught classes on photography in New York. On June 12, 1916, she married Chester Irvin Wagner, an inventor and businessman, who had three children from a previous marriage. In newspapers of her day, she continued to use her maiden name, and was still working at photography till at least 1919.Nina Marbourg. "Getting Pictures of the Baby." Montgomery (AL) Advertiser, April 27, 1919, p. 50. She and her husband were living in East Orange, NJ when Chester died in 1942;"Deaths in Jersey." Bridgewater (NJ) Courier-News, October 26, 1942, p. 17. Pearl died in 1944.
Career Loehr had a portrait studio in New York, but specialized in "home portraiture"."Woman Turns Photography of Children into a Fine Art" New York Herald (January 27, 1918): 42. via Newspapers.com "She catches them just at the moment when they are most essentially themselves," explained one 1916 profile about her portraits of children, adding "Old Age is equally considered and its peculiar features brought out to perfection"."A Painter-Photographer: Pearl Grace Loehr" The Camera (January 1916): 1-8. Quote on page 6. She gave a talk on "Home Portraiture" at the 1912 meeting of the Photographers Association of America in Philadelphia.Pearl Grace Loehr, "Home Portraiture" Bulletin of Photography (September 18, 1912): 434-437. "It is almost a fatal mistake to have a grown person in the room outside of one's self. The grown person has a tendency to fuss over the child and generally makes it nervous," she noted of her own technique. "Every child has a distinct personality and unless one gets that, what is the use?""Photography of Children Turned into a Fine Art" Bulletin of Photography (February 20, 1918): 172-174.
Loehr served as president of the Women's Federation of the Photographers Association of America in 1913-1914,Pearl Grace Loehr, "The Relation of the Women's Federation to the Photographic Profession" Wilson's Photographic Magazine (January 1914): 3-10. working with Mary Carnell, Bayard Wootten, Maybelle Goodlander, Clara Louise Hagins, and Blanche Reineke in the Federation's leadership."Report of the Women's Federation Executive Board at Atlanta, Ga.", Wilson's Photographic Magazine (February 1914): 82.Pearl Grace Loehr, "Convention Plans of the Women's Federation of Photographers" Wilson's Photographic Magazine (April 1914): 190.
Loehr was appointed to head the new Photographic Department at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1915."Our Illustrations" Studio Light (May 1916): 8."Miss Loehr Becomes an Instructor" Photo-era (March 1916): 148. Also in 1915, Loehr made a set of portraits of author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman.Folder 329 (7 photographs by Pearl Grace Loehr, New York, 1915), the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Digital Collection, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
References
External links
Pearl Grace Loehr portrait of Julian Alden Weir standing, in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.