Lora Webb Nichols

 

"On October 28, 1899, Lora Webb Nichols was at her family’s homestead, near Encampment, Wyoming, reading “Five Little Peppers Midway,” when her beau, Bert Oldman, came to the door to deliver a birthday present. The sixteen-year-old Nichols would marry the thirty-year-old Oldman the following year, and divorce him a decade later. The gift, however—a Kodak camera—would change the course of her life. Between 1899 and her death, in 1962, Nichols created and collected some twenty-four thousand negatives documenting life in her small Wyoming town."

The narrative above is the lead paragraph for a wonderful article in "The New Yorker" magazine.  Of course, it is paywalled but I was able to access the article simply by providing an email.  I have several "dummy" email accounts on hand for just such a purpose!  It's well worth trying to access "The New Yorker" article (linked here) but if you can't access it we have provided a variety of other sources to learn about this remarkable woman and her incredible photographic legacy.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-womans-intimate-record-of-wyoming-in-the-early-twentieth-century

Lora received her clunky Kodak box camera when she was sixteen years old.  Her she is shown wearing her Mother's hat  January 6, 1900, a little over two months after getting the camera.  There are over 21,800 of Lora's photos archived.  You can access them via this link:

https://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu/luna/servlet/view/all/who/Nichols%2C+Lora+Webb%2C+1883-1962.?sort=rid%2Ctitle%2Cdate_original%2Csource

This is where Lora lived when she received her camera.  Her Family called this place "Willow Glen".  Those are Wyoming's Snowy Range Mountains in the background.  This link gives you a good, all-around introduction to Lora and her work.  It also features some of her iconic early photos.

https://www.wyominghistoryday.org/theme-topics/collections/lora-webb-nichols

Here's another snippet from "The New Yorker" article: "Nichols’s images from the first half of her life often depict what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, a historian of the nineteenth century, termed “the female world of love and ritual,” a domestic sphere of deep bonds between women."  Shown above is Lora with her pet cat "Yankee Doodle".  The photo was created February 6, 1900, and Lora looks much older than her 16 years.

Kodak's boxy, primitive roll-film cameras revolutionized photography.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lora_Webb_Nichols

About six years after Lora became a prolific photographer she opened her own darkroom.  Lora's photographer pursuits would continue for 49 years!  Here is a link to a book about her:

https://www.lorawebbnichols.org/lwn-shop/bookonly

From our own personal perspective there are many things to love about Lora's photos.  One of those things are glimpses of various aspects of early 20th Century Life in the rural west.  We've always wanted to see what an early telephone switchboard operation actually looked like and Lora caught this one "in action", to to speak.  We look forward to perusing Lora's archive into the foreseeable future.