Adirondack chronicler and biographer Maitland De Sormo described Seneca Ray Stoddard as “gentle, easy-going, (and) unassuming.” He was not above poking fun at himself; even when a life-threatening mishap was the subject of his humor. One of the emerging technologies that he helped pioneer in the 1890s was nighttime flash photography, using magnesium metal powder, which was flammable and dangerous. Sometimes his larger subjects required the brighter flash of actual gunpowder. Held aloft in a tray or cup to be ignited with an electric spark, the photographer had to trigger the flash and shutter simultaneously. Stoddard was the first photographer to capture the Washington Memorial Arch, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, at night. He described the near-death experience in an interview with the photography editor of the New York Tribune in March 1890:
“Instead of boiling up out of the cup, as any well-mannered charge ought to have done, the unusually large amount of magnesium needed to illuminate so large an object misbehaved. Other guncotton and gunpowder charges have always acted properly, but the force of this one seemed to be downward like dynamite. It exploded with a loud detonation, tore the cup into fragments and boiled down over my head and shoulders in a sheet of flames which singed hair and beard and seared my hands and the side of my face like a hot iron. So, after I got my slide in and saved my plate, I held an impromptu reception with the policemen and a sympathizing crowd. This was followed by a free ride in an ambulance to St. Vincent’s Hospital. But the photograph was entirely successful!”
By the end of his career Stoddard would capture nocturnal images of the Rock of Gibraltar, the Alhambra, the Sphinx, the Acropolis, St. Paul’s Cathedral in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe and many other landmarks, gaining him international acclaim and recognition. All of this was accomplished without the existence of the flashbulb, which would not be invented until the 1920s.
But his night views of people in the Adirondacks are among the most iconic and artistic he would create. Using his magnesium flash system and ambient firelight, he composed and captured campfire scenes of hunters with their game, lumbermen sharing stories in their logging camp by the stove, Henry Van Hoevenberg regaling his guests on the piazza of his Adirondack Lodge, guides playing cards, Great Camp visitors in a Raquette Lake lean-to being serenaded by violin, members of Verplank Colvin’s survey team socializing around the fire, and many others. His ability to balance light and darkness in a dramatic and aesthetic manner while posing up to a dozen or more people, and then asking them to freeze for the open shutter, was pure genius. By positioning the magnesium flash off-camera behind the campfire and using the right amount of magnesium to illuminate the scope of the scene, Stoddard made it appear to the viewer that the campfire or fireplace is the actual source of the light for the image. Looking closely at some photographs, however, one can see the billowing cloud of dust from the magnesium emanating from the side of some larger scenes, such as Adirondack Lodge by the Campfire.
Seneca Ray Stoddard: An Intimate Portrait of an Adirondack Legend, Daniel Way’s book on the photographer—who is also his great-great uncle—was published in partnership with the Warren County Historical Society and is available on Amazon or eBay. Learn more at www.danielway.com.
