Ella E. McBride

McBride moved to Seattle, Washington by 1907 to work in the Curtis Studio. She managed the office and worked in the showroom and darkroom. In 1909, she operated his booth at the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition. She opened her own studio in 1916 and the following year Edmund Schwinke joined McBride as a partner. In 1918, Wayne Albee joined the studio as chief photographer and a partner. He was assisted by Soichi Sunami and Frank Kunishige. Albee was a source of inspiration for McBride's photography, she was particularly interested in floral fine art works beginning in 1920. The studio's images were produced in local publications, including the Town Crier magazine. It photographed musicians and dancers at the Cornish School of the Arts. McBride's work was "firmly in the Pictorialist school", as opposed to the "Modernist sharp-focus documentary style" that was prevalent after the 1920s, and thus her work became less popular over time. She was the only Caucasian and only woman who exhibited at the North American Times Exhibition of Pictorial Photographs in 1921. She won honorable mention for three of the floral photographs she exhibited at the Frederick & Nelson Salon. In 1922, she exhibited at a Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain competition. There were only 154 works selected out of thousands submitted. Three floral photographs of twelve accepted by American photographers were taken by McBride. McBride exhibited eight photographs in 1922 at the Frederick & Nelson Salon. It includes a portrait of Kunishige, other figure studies, landscapes and the floral still-life, Life & Death. She exhibited at F&N in 1923 and 1925. Her interest in Japanese art is evident in her A Shirley Poppy and Dogwood works. McBride was an early member of the Seattle Camera Club, which stated that she was among the world's most exhibited photographers. Her works included floral and figure studies of artists and dancers. Her works were published in the Royal Photographic Society, American Photography and other magazines in the United States and abroad. Full-page illustrations of her photographs were shown in the American Annual of Photography in 1927 and 1928. Her work was exhibited at the First International Photographic Salon of Japan in May 1927 and then solo exhibitions. In August, 30 of her prints were shown at the California Camera Club in San Francisco and in November at the Portage Camera Club in Akron, Ohio. Another solo exhibition was held in January 1931 at the Art Institute of Seattle. Her works were exhibited internationally in Paris, London, Stockholm, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Toronto, Turin, Vancouver, and Budapest. Within the United States, besides Seattle, her works were shown in New York, Chicago, Rochester, Syracuse, Cleveland, Akron, and Portland. Her exhibitions were concentrated over a 10-year period, during which she was the sixth most exhibited Pictorialist photographer in the world in 1926 to 1927. She stopped exhibiting at the beginning of the Depression. In 1925, McBride cofounded the women's Seattle Metropolitan Soroptimist Club, which she was a member and officer for almost 40 years. She focused most of her effort on her studio during the Depression. Albee had moved to California about 1930 and in 1932 she took on a new partner, commercial photographer Richard H. Anderson, who particularly took images of children. From then until the 1960s, it was one of the leading studios in Seattle. They were located in the Loveless Studio building. Her eyesight began to fail and at the age of 91, she retired. Her work is documented in the book Captive Light: The Life and Photography of Ella E. McBride by Margaret E. Bullock and David F. Martin.