WPT University Place University Place Presents  Sara Rath, "HH Bennett: His American Landscape"  November 8, 2010 UP516   cc >> Norman Gilliland: Welcome to University Place. I'm Norman Gilliland. The photographs of Henry Hamilton Bennett give us a glimpse at Wisconsin at a time when it was changing rapidly, when vast forests were coming down and sprawling cities were sprouting up. When once wild rivers filled with lumber rafts and steamboats and excursion parties. From 1857 to 1908 Bennett lived in Kilbourn City which much later became known as the Wisconsin Dells. He made his own cameras and pioneered techniques including stop action and panoramas. And along the way he preserved a lifestyle and a landscape that were rapidly vanishing. Sara Rath has written a book about HH Bennett, and she is going to give us some insights into the man and his life and his work and his times. Welcome to University Place. >> Sara Rath: Thank you Norman, it's nice to be here. 

>> Let's start with the picture on the cover of the book. A fairly young man in a rather interesting and rather unusual pose it seems to me. >> A rather natty outfit with the checkered vest and the checkered pants. This was taken after the Civil War. As you can see he's hiding his right hand, and that's probably because he only had the use of his thumb and his middle finger. When he was in the Civil War one night during guard duty the gun went off and he shot himself. No one knew at that point whether it was on purpose or whether it was accidental. He enjoyed being in the service, he loved the camaraderie of the army but it became very tedious after three years and I think he was ready to come home. >> At that point he was fighting for Wisconsin? >> Yes, he was with the Union Army, he was with a group of young men from Kilbourn. And at first they had a great time. 

They camped at Camp Randall. A bear accompanied them into Chicago where they marched into the streets. >> A mascot. >> Yes. They finally sold it in Leavenworth, Kansas, for $5. Yes, that was their mascot. >> Bennett came originally from Vermont. >> Yes, he came from lower Canada. He was born there and shortly after that his father moved the family to Brattleboro, Vermont, because that was where Bennett's mother's family was. And they were not very well off so they moved in with her and her husband and they worked the farm. 

And then Bennett's father's brother Albert came west to work on the railroad. Byron Kilbourn was putting the railroad through Wisconsin, and he was building a railroad bridge over the Wisconsin River. And Albert wrote home and said the work was really good and the money was good and that Henry's father should come out. And so he did and Henry went with him. He was 14 years old. And he worked on the bridge, and he was very happy to be in Wisconsin. >> Let's see if we can get a look at what Kilbourn, Wisconsin, looked like. This would be the future Wisconsin Dells about the time that Henry arrived. >> Indeed, that is the Superior Street Bridge in Kilbourn. And at that time, I believe, the village had been in existence for about a year. 

And it had a doctor, it had, as Henry wrote home to his mother, there were 40 houses. It was a town that was just beginning, but it was nothing like the city he had left. Brattleboro was a very well-established New England community. >> Pretty sophisticated, I guess. >> With a library, the post office started in the 1700s. They had a lot of mechanization. They had factories and it was a classy New England city on the Connecticut River. So Kilbourn was kind of a shock. But for an adventuresome 14-year-old boy it was pretty exciting to come out west. >> And that became his residence for life. 

>> Yes it did. >> Kilbourn City, Wisconsin. >> Yes it did. >> We have here, I think it is a family picture. This is Henry and his younger sister. >> Yes, his sister Sara. This is in his uniform and you get a better look at his right hand there holding his hat. I think that's probably after he was discharged from the service. >> Another look here just after the war, I believe, Kilbourn City. Is this an early photographic studio? >> Yes, it is. 

And that's Broadway in Wisconsin Dells. If you drive through Wisconsin Dells now, that's the main street that you would drive down. It looks considerably different, you wouldn't recognize it. That gallery belonged to Leroy Gates who was a river pilot, and he also had a tintype studio. And when Henry got out of the service he was unable to work as a carpenter anymore. So he took over the tintype business of Leroy Gates. And didn't do very well with it. Tintype is a real sensitive kind of procedure and business was not terrific. There was a economic depression in the country, and he found lots of reason to avoid doing much there. >> So what's the connection? Where did he go from failed tintype artist to photographer? >> Well, not very long after he got out of the service he met a woman name Frankie Douty. 

He liked to ice skate a lot and through the winter he skated and skated and skated every night. He brought his skates from Vermont. And he romanced this woman and they were married. And they went to Tomah, Wisconsin, and he was going to have a traveling photo tent like his uncle George had in the Civil War. His uncle George Houghton was from Vermont and followed the Civil War troops from Vermont and took their pictures. And he thought he would have a traveling photo tent and travel through Wisconsin taking portraits. But failed miserably. Had to go back to the Dells, took the tintype studio over again. Eventually moved to a process called the wet plate process of photography. And his wife, Frankie, took over the portrait business because Bennett hated trying to make people sit still, especially children. 

And so he wanted to get out in the wilderness and take pictures of nature. >> Well this will be Bennett here then. This would be an early Dells excursion. >> Yes, you see the guides on either side. They're guiding the tourists up and down the river. The women and their parasols to protect them from the sun and the men are wearing top hats, which I love. It looks like a lazy Sunday afternoon on the river. And the guides would point out different aspects of the scenery that they should take note of. Now you should realize in those days that was before the dam went in so the water was 20 feet lower. And there were many phenomenal rock formations to see at that time that are not visible now. 

>> We'll maybe touch on that a little later. The irony that here was a man what was in effect calling attention to the dells with all of these photographs, encouraging tourism, and that's what brought the dam, ultimately, was that kind of progress. This is I believe the photographer himself. >> Yes it is. He spent a lot of time going up and down the dells. He had a small photo tent that he invented and you that on the boat. The wet plate process demanded that the glass plates be covered with amalgam and kept damp, and he invented a process whereby you kept a damp sponge inside the camera to keep everything damp. And then you had to develop it right there. The footnote for that particular process is really long in my book. But it took a lot of effort to haul this equipment up and down the hills and up and down the river. 

So he usually had an assistant to help him with that. >> He looks tired. >> He looks tired in that picture, yes, he looks exhausted. Now that could be a self-portrait. I'm not sure. He might have taken that himself. >> There were actually techniques to get that far from the camera and have your picture snapped. >> I think so. Maybe he had an assistant with that one. That was pretty far away. 

>> Here's another view but from higher up, obviously. This is called Upstream from the Mouth of Witches Gulch. And Henry and his father, after they got to the dells, they went up to see what the scenery was like because it had been pretty well hyped by the newspapers of the day. And he wrote to his mother and said, "I feel first rate and like it here very well. We've got into our new house. We are going to work on the Wisconsin River here. This is going to be a large place in a few years," he had no idea. >> He certainly had that one right. >> That's right. There's a place above here on the Wisconsin River called the dells where the river is about 50 feet wide. 

And then he and his father went up there and saw this beautiful scenery. And his father wrote home to Harriet, to Mrs. Bennett, and described how gorgeous it was. And Henry at the time, of course, had no idea that this would be the scenery that would engage his life for the rest of his life. >> And of course a lot of people will be glad that he did because scenery, as it turns out just like people, changes or can change beyond recognition. >> Yes, but I also want to point out the fact that he called this photograph Upstream from Witches Gulch. And a lot of people have tours of the dells and they don't realize that Bennett was responsible for the names of many of those rock formations. He discovered Witches Gulch. He found it one summer when he was rowing up the river on his own and he swam over toward it and he heard a waterfall and he climbed some rocks and saw a waterfall but couldn't get up over the waterfall. So he went back in the winter on his ice skates and hacked some steps on the waterfall and was able to get up and over the waterfall and back into what we all know, those of us who have taken the tour, as Witches Gulch. And the next summer he and a steamboat captain fixed it with planks and so forth so tourists would be able to walk back there and it would be one of the attractions. 

>> So the dells were also, or the Kilbourn area as it would have been called then, an attraction of any kind year-round or really primarily in the summer? >> It was summer, yes, it was definitely summer. And the steamboats weren't there yet when he came of course. It was just the rowboats and the tour guides and the rowboats. You could take a tour of the dells with a guide in his boat and he would cushion it and make you very comfortable and you'd feel like a queen or a king and be rowed up river and given a private tour. >> You know, even today portraits can be pretty stilted, they can be pretty formal and pretty unconvincing if you go to any number of commercial photographic studios and have your picture taken. There might be a plastic fence behind you and some kind of pseudo clouds. Still that 19th century tradition was very much with us of trumping up a photo and making it kind of a tableau. >> Okay you're talking about the next photograph. A lot of times Bennett wanted to try out new equipment. So he would do something that like which he called trying on the dog. 

And here they've hauled some of their household furniture and furnishings to the studio to try and make it look more home-like. And that is Henry Bennett with his daughter Hattie and Nellie is in the middle, Frankie is sitting there with some crocheting and Ashley is on the floor with the building blocks. And Ashley was due to receive some fame in the future. We'll talk about that when we get to Ashley's picture. >> And so this was really how, was this is bread and butter, the portraits, or was it the landscape pictures that would have been used in what way? As postcards, or what? >> Well I think the early bread and butter was portraits. But then when the tourists became more numerous and when the steamboats started coming to the dells, then he started selling stereos to the tourists and they would take them home and show their friends because that was a popular form of parlor entertainment and then more and more people starting coming. The next photograph is of Devil's Lake. So it should be understood that he didn't take only photographs of the dells. And here you can see his assistant, who he probably had to bribe, to crawl way out to the end. Of course that stone formation, that rock formation still exists, but I wouldn't recommend climbing out to the end of it. 

I would never try that myself. >> Even now with a lot of the on belay it's typical proposition for a lot of people. >> A lot of people have fallen, yes, at Devil's Lake. >> That would have been in about 1883, that particular picture. And now we have something that's very different, let's put it that way. >> This is a very sad photograph. >> It is. Without knowing anything about it, it's sad, isn't it? >> It's very different from anything else he's ever done. This was taken in Kansas in 1883. His wife Frankie developed consumption. 

And he felt tremendously guilty. He thought that having her spend time in the cold dark, damp darkroom had helped cause her illness. And the doctors had said a milder climate might help her feel better. So to try to help her he rented a buggy and a horse and they went west. And this is in Kansas and the scenery is very bleak. He didn't take many photographs on this trip. And I really love this. It has such a sense of, it's very sad for one thing, I shouldn't say that I love it because it's sad, but it's very different. It has a real mood or real emotion about it that can't help but draw you in. I don't know what the people are, I don't know what that little building is. 

It's very un-Bennett like. >> Well, it's very un-Wisconsin like too, obviously in that there are no features of the landscape. >> Yes, it was very sad. Very depressing. And reflects his feelings of the time. >> Well let's get a little contrast then. >> Okay. After his wife died in, I think she lived for another year, he went through something that he called his Bennett blues which involved some drinking, a lot of depression and he came back to photography and this is an early circus parade in Milwaukee. Now it's not the circus parades like we know today. When circuses came to town in those days they would parade their wagons through town and show the passersby what animals they had and some of their acrobats and try to encourage people to come and buy a ticket to the circus. 

So that's what this was. And this was probably around 1885. >> It's a great form of advertising and to some extent is still with us. >> That's why those circus wagons became so colorful because they were used for this kind of thing. >> Attract attention. Well, all right, speaking of attracting attention, this is the most famous photograph by HH Bennett. >> Yes. This is his son Ashley leaping the chasm at Stand Rock. Now this is still done up at the dells but it's done by a dog and the dog as a net under him. If you go to the Bennett studio and museum in the dells, they have a place marked out on the floor where you can pretend to jump the chasm and see if you can make it. 

But what you don't realize when you're doing that on the floor is that one rock is higher than the other. So it's really more difficult. Now, this was possible because while he was recuperating from Frankie's death, Henry wanted to have an instantaneous shutter. They were all the rage in all of photographic magazines. >> To stop action. >> To stop action. But none of them lived up to his standards of perfection. So he thought he could invent his own. And he did. He called it a snapper and he made it out of rubber bands. 

So this was one of his first pictures by a snapper, and it was widely thought to be a fake. >> Because he actually had done some fakes if you want to call them that, some composite photographs. Some of which were very clever. We're going to see one or two of them a little later. >> His agent wanted him to do some of those. They were selling well for some photographers. So they involved little miniatures and little Indian figurines. And he hated doing them, but his agent kept asking for more because it was a business. He was trying to keep his family going. >> So he already had this little bit of reputation as being a trick photographer, and this was believed to be just one more. 

Now when we say this photograph, actually how many times did he photograph his son actually jumping? >> There are quite a few photographs like this. This is just the one that I chose for the book. There were many, many, many. >> So it was actually kind of like jumping all day. >> But that's not unusual. He photographed the same scene many, many times. He was such a perfectionist. In one photograph a leaf may have moved in the breeze, the camera might have shifted. The exposures had to be pretty long without that snapper. And so he with frequently go back to take a picture of a landscape because a cloud had gone across the sun at the last minute or he just felt it could be a little bit bitter. 

He was always trying to be a little bit better. >> Was that picture of Ashley leaping the chasm was that popular in that day? Was that a big seller? >> Yes, it's still really popular. >> Yes, for sure. >> Go ahead. >> Well I was thinking now here's another action shot. >> Yes. >> Different effect though. You have more of a feel not so much in stop action as action in progress. >> Well and he was only able to capture it because he had his snapper. When he moved to the dells he was very much in awe of the raftsmen who came down river on these cribs of rafts. 

They are sawn pine logs from the pine woods in the north. And they were in cribs of 16-feet square and they were tied together. And the raftsmen were a bawdy bunch. They were hard, rough and tumble men. They visited a house of ill repute which was down a little further called the Dell House. They were hard drinking. They were rugged individuals. And Bennett really wanted to travel with them. So when he had his instantaneous shutter he was able to take a trip with the Arpin Lumber Company rafts that came down from Wisconsin Rapids. And this is one going through the rapids. 

Running the Kilbourn Dam it's called. And he did a series of these. This was in 1886 and the whole series tells the whole story of what it was like to be a raftsman. And it was one of the very first examples of photojournalism. >> Was this a handheld camera at this point? >> He probably had a tripod. >> Really? Even then a tripod would have been a tricky proposition either way. >> Well, but he could take the instantaneous shot, yes. >> And so, again, it was a matter of taking, as photographers tend to do today, taking a lot of shots. >> Yes. >> And out of that you get the one or two that you want. 

>> That's true, yes. And this is another photograph that he took with his rubber band shutter, his snapper. This was at the St. Paul winter carnival. And he was one of the first photographers to take pictures of fireworks. >> Which is another, not just stop action but kind of a special situation where you're literally in the dark. >> That's right. >> And you're capturing something that's very quickly changing. >> On the other hand, I'm wondering if this didn't need a longer exposure to get the many fireworks that were going off. And the castle, of course, was made entirely of ice. So that was quite a celebration in the 1800s. 

>> Yes, I would think it would be a big seller today too. >> Yes. >> So by the time we get into the 1880s, is he becoming well known at all, HH Bennett, or is he just kind of a fairly successful regional photographer? >> He was never fairly successful during his lifetime. And he had to take on a lot of commissions in order to make things work for his family because he had a growing family and because you couldn't depend on tourism year-round at the dells, it was a summer thing. Like it is now except for the fact that it's the greatest water slide capital of the world so they can depend on that. This is one of his commissions. It was done for the Wisconsin Central Railroad, and it began in Duluth and went down to Fox Lake, Illinois. >> This is Neenah? >> This is Neenah. It's the Lake Winnebago as taken from the city hall in Neenah. And he did a series of these photographs in central Wisconsin which I was really delighted to include in the book. 

They were printed in a booklet called Pen and Camera which became owned by the railroad, and so they were not attributed to Bennett until after his death. And he took pictures of the chain of lakes and of a lot of areas along the way, Stevens Point and Apostle Islands, places that we would never relate Bennett to. This is the special train car that he and Charles Brainard were given by the Wisconsin Central. Charles Brainard is on the left. He was quite a character. You see the knife stuck into the floor and the shotgun or rifle. And he called Bennett Kilbourn Bennett. And Brainard was quite a character. >> And this is a stereo. Now we mentioned stereo images earlier being all the rage for a while. 

>> For a long time. >> I know that there was stereo imaging even in the Civil War. There was a famous one on the attack on Fort Sumter there are some early stereo images. And so you have actually brought a little show and tell here for us. >> Yes, I did. >> Would this be a stereopticon? >> It's called a stereoscope but I think maybe stereopticon would work too. The idea is our eyes are approximately two and a half inches across. So when you take stereo pictures like this you take them from two and a half inches apart. And Bennett's first camera was a cigar box, and it only had one lens. So he would take a picture and then he would move the camera two and a half inches to the side and then he would take another one. 

And when you mount the pictures you have to reverse them on the card or else they don't have the depth that you need. Don't ask me why but that's the truth. So you put the stereo in here and then you adjust it and it's three-dimensional. And in that day that was wow. >> Quite the novelty. But isn't it kind of like a two-layer three-dimensional. You get a sense of one picture behind the other but definitely a three-dimensional effect. >> Definitely three dimensions, yes. Just take a look here. >> I can't wait. 

I thought you'd never ask. >> I think that's Witches Gulch. >> That's actually more three-dimensional than some that I've seen. You're looking right down. >> He learned a great deal about how to layer the things that he was photographing because he had a mentor in Milwaukee named William Metcalf who was a very wealthy and shoe and boot manufacturer and an artist. He contributed a lot of paintings to the Layton Art Gallery. And he took a liking to Bennett and helped him out by critiquing his photographs and telling him that he should have something more in the foreground and what the distance should be to try to build that sense of dimension. And in 1875 he decided that Bennett needed to move out of that pathetic little tintype studio, and he loaned him the money to build his real studio. And in 1881 he gave it to him outright. >> Is he doing these stereo images pretty much for the rest of his career? >> That's always been the major seller, yes. 

All of his photographs. Most of them were done in stereo. A lot of them were repeated as single images rather than stereos, like this one of Chief Yellow Thunder, which is a very famous Winnebago shot that he did. He was supposed to be 110 years old there. He developed a very friendly relationship with the local Indians and took a lot of photographs of their camp. >> And these are actually the original run of these stereo pictures. >> I have to tell you I bought them on eBay a few years ago. I got a deal. Look at this one, isn't that cool? Yes, well they're not cheap. You can find a really lovely original Bennett on eBay right now, an eight by ten, for $3,500. 

>> Well that's probably better than he ever did with it in his life. >> My goodness, he wouldn't believe it, no. >> Now as much as he loved the landscapes, he did also, would this have been commissioned that would have him do a cityscape like this. >> Yes, this was a commission for Simon L. Stein who was a photographer from Milwaukee. A few years previously he had done this sort of thing in Milwaukee for an album called Milwaukee. And it was a big seller. There are a lot of pictures from that in my book. And I knew that he had done the same thing in Chicago because Stein wanted a book of Chicago photographs in time for the Chicago World's Fair. But these pictures were very hard to find because he sold the negatives to Stein. And if you see on the bottom it says copyright S.L. Stein. 

But Bennett took the pictures because I compared the pictures with his journals and diaries and he made intricate notes about everything that he took. What the weather was like, where the camera was located, whether there were smoke in the air, what time of day. >> And of course what kind of camera too. >> What kind of camera, yes. What the lens setting was, what he was able to capture. And I found these Chicago photographs in the Chicago Public Library. The album called Chicago. And so we got a special arrangement with them to reproduce these Chicago pictures in our book. And it's quite lovely I think to be able to see what the city of Chicago was like downtown during the World's Fair. Women with their hoop skirts trying to get across the muddy street and the street cars and the carriages and the horses. 

>> That's the every day, it's the non-posed lifestyle. >> Yes, but there are the skyscrapers. And yet down on the ground we have the horses and the women in their long dresses. It's almost an ironic combination. >> Something that most people  wouldn't think about that combination. Now what's the story behind this photograph because it doesn't seem to be posed. >> No, it's not. This was another commission that he had. This one was for the State Board of Control for Reformatory, Charitable and Penal Institutions. And this is an art class at the school for the deaf. 

I love it because it has a real sense of quiet and beauty and the women are lovely and I just love this photograph. It has such a mood about it. >> It has a wonderful every day quality to it. >> Yes. >> A moment captured. >> And he did that with the interior of the Waupun prison, with school for boys, with a lot of the institutions that the state was running at the time. >> Would this have been commissioned? The state wanted pictures of these? >> That's right. And they wanted them to show at the World's Fair. To show how progressive Wisconsin was. >> How progressive Wisconsin is. 

We've got these great penal institutions. >> With orphans and with the deaf and with the blind. Yes, that's right. >> Well speaking of progress and the World's Fair, this was the Columbian Exposition, 1893, Chicago. And the center of attraction. >> Yes. Bennett's agent was not able to get him the license to the photograph the World's Fair. So this was taken afterward. And it was the very first Ferris wheel. It was, I believe, 26 stories high. 

>> Actually I think those are railroad cars, the cars on the Ferris wheel. If you read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, it will give you the whole gloss on that fantastic device. Which was kind of a last minute addition to the fair, I think. >> It took a long time to ride there, too. If you'll excuse me a minute I have a note about it because I thought that was pretty cool. >> There's a great story about when they first tested it and they first sent it on a circuit. And all these missing tools came raining out of the Ferris wheel. >> Well it carried 2,160 passengers at a time. >> For 1893, you have to ask yourself is that a technology that you would trust? >> I wouldn't want to ride on it to tell you the truth because you get two revolutions and the thing is everybody had to get off when you got to the bottom. So you'd be going a little bit, you'd stop. 

What if, this is my own peculiarity, but what if you had to go to the bathroom? >> And you were at the top. >> Yes, and it's going to take a long time before you get down to the bottom. >> It may well have come up. >> I'm sure the views were tremendous. >> I'm sure they were. Given that it was a white city. It was a fantastic, literally, city in Chicago in 1893. So quite the spectacular attraction. And here we're back out in the landscapes. >> Yes. 

This is called Lone Rock with Canoe. And it's owned by the Milwaukee Art Center. And they gave us permission to use this in the book. You wouldn't probably understand why this was so spectacular but it's an example of Bennett's genius because he used cloud masks in this photograph. >> Cloud masks, does that mean that he's actually superimposing something on the clear sky? >> Yes. >> But they he has to do it in the water backwards? >> In reverse, yes. That's why this is such an unusual and very unique, very wonderful photograph. It's just superb. >> And nobody would be the wiser I assume. It's not the kind of thing you're going to promote as look what I can do. 

>> This was part of his genius. This was something that he did that was unusual and very special for someone in a rural area like he was with limited technology that he had. >> This is the Bennett family, I think, a little bit later in his life. >> Yes, it's his second wife, Evaline Marshall, who was 20 years younger than he. And their daughter Miriam in the center and their daughter Ruth in the front. This was taken about 1896. The interesting thing about this is that after his death his wife Evaline carried on the studio and his daughter Miriam, who is in the center, worked with her mother and then she carried the studio on till I believe, for a very long time and she became a filmmaker of some repute. One of her films is being preserved by the National Film Institute. >> This would be just the time when film started to become manageable. >> Back in the 1930s, yes. 

>> So how long were Bennett family members actually in the studio in the dells? >> Well that's the wonderful thing. The Bennett family... >> This is a look at the studio here. >> This is the turn of the century when they stopped selling so many photographs, not because they didn't have the photographs, but because tourists had their own cameras and wanted to take their own pictures and the studio started to sell more souvenirs than photographs which was a very sad moment for them. A lot of Winnebago artifacts, a lot of Winnebago women, or Ho-Chunk women, made beadwork that he sold in the shop. This was Emma Pettibone who was one of his favorite jewelry makers. During this time, at the turn of the century, Gimbels Department Store in Milwaukee wanted three of the women to come and demonstrate their beadwork. And Henry Bennett was very, very concerned about them going to the big city. So he wrote Gimbels a series of letters telling them how they should treat these women and be very kind to them and be very gentle to them because he was afraid that the bustle and hustle of the city would frighten them. >> He didn't take very many pictures of Ho-Chunk, did he? But he did take some that are notable and they're always going to be compelling because to think that people were in what you might call the native state this late in Wisconsin. 

This is a the 1890s by now and you see them in their native costumes. >> He had to develop a great deal of trust with them because they allowed him to come into their camp, to take pictures of their women and take pictures of some of their ceremonies. They gave him a name. He tried to learn the language. He was rather miserable at communicating with them in their own language. But he was fascinated by them and so were the tourists. They loved the photographs. They thought this was the wild and woolly west because the railroad came here and that's how they got here. And they saw the landscape and it was very exciting for them. For tourists it was a part of coming and reveling in the wilderness. 

>> Now is this image an example of where he would blend the portrait and the landscape maybe including a family member in the landscape? >> No this is an example of showing a sense of scale, which he frequently did in his landscapes. This is the upper dells and it's his daughters Miriam and Ruth. And with the girls in the pictures you can tell how high the rocks are. Without them it could have been anywhere. >> Now there's another thing I've noticed in his landscapes, the ones that have water in them, and here's another, this is actually a picture of him, I believe, late in life, that the water is so flat, so still. You get the impression that the subject had to stand there immobile for a long time to wait for the water to get that flat. But he seems to favor that flat water maybe because of a reflective surface or I'm not sure. >> That's possible but if it was windy his camera would be jarred. >> So he would just wait for a very still day. >> Or take several. 

>> Even so, to get in the boat like that you're going to stir up the water and you have to stand there holding that pose. >> Yes. And you can see the case for his camera in the front of the boat there too. This is another photograph of Ruth and Miriam. And they were school girls when their father died in 1908. He died on New Year's day. And he had Bright's disease which was a disease of the kidneys. But his family also felt that he died of a broken heart because at this time the dam was going in in Kilbourn City. And the city fathers felt that Kilbourn was going to be a manufacturing town. How wrong they were. 

>> So there was, I assume, one faction which would include Bennett saying you need to preserve this and the income will come from tourism, and then there was the faction that said factory town, the dam must go in. And that put, what, 20-feet worth of the dells under water. >> Of the upper dells. The lower dells is still the same but the upper dells was raised. And when they were finally were able to get electrical power produced by that dam, which was after Bennett's death, it went to Watertown to run the street cars. It didn't go into manufacturing. >> A little miscalculation there. >> Yes. >> So is there a legacy for HH Bennett? Was he known pretty much throughout the 20th century or is this a matter of rediscovery on your part as a biographer? >> Well, he was rediscovered by John Szarkowski, who was a college student here at UW, and I can't tell you exactly when that was. It's in the introduction to my book. 

I think it was probably in the 1940s. And Szarkowski became curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. And he featured Bennett in a large exhibition of American landscape photographers which elevated him to the status of Ansel Adams and many of the other great landscape photographers of that era. And I think the exhibit was call Landscape Photography and the American Photographer, something like that. I'm really blowing that but it's mentioned in the book. So then a larger look was taken at Bennett, and he had also done these beautiful panoramic photographs for railroad offices, which no one to this day knows how he did. He would take, he had a large format camera that he built himself. Took 11- by 21-inch photographs. >> There's one that's about 17 or 18 inches high and five feet wide. >> Yes. 

And he merged the negatives seamlessly. And you cannot tell where one photograph left off and another one begins. And no one knows how that was done. >> Those panoramas were kind of a fashion back then, but usually you see them either as a series of pictures or somehow jointed. >> A lot of times they were done for the railroads, again, to encourage passengers to take trips to the dells. But they are now held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, there's one available on eBay for thousands of dollars. They're very rare and they're very unusual. >> What was his priority, commercial work notwithstanding, as a photographer? What was his main goal as a photographer? >> I think to support his family, I really do. I thought about that a lot. He fell in love with the dells. 

He made a statement saying throughout his lifetime he'd try to be the best photographer he could be and in that process he fell in love with the dells. But I think the thing he was proudest of was his family and that he was able to keep them fed, they bought a nice house, they all did good things, it was a good family and I have for say to this day they are a very loving family. They've been so nice to me. And they never threw anything away which is a dream for a biographer because there were boxes and boxes of material for me to choose from for this book. >> Pictures and letters? >> Letters, notes, diaries, his Civil War diary, little tablets on which he'd made notes about each photograph he took. So it was wonderful. Receipts, information about the studio, studio inventories. And a lot of this is reproduced in our book. >> Do you have a sense that when he was taking photographs that he felt that he was preserving something for future  generations? There's such an irony in that the every day shots that he took of people are of a time so different now that they are this glimpse into the past, themselves, not just the landscapes but just the most ordinary things that he took pictures of. >> Well of course he had no way of knowing what the dells would become today. 

And it's quite a wonderland. It was considered a wonderland in its time, but now it's an amazing wonderland of, it's just a montage of unbelievable exciting things. I don't know that he thought so much about preservation except maybe his Ho-Chunk photographs. When it became evident that the dam was going to go in he perhaps then thought that he wanted to preserve some photographs of the dells that were especially favorites of his, favorite scenes. But he had already taken them many times over and perfected them as much as he possibly could. So I don't know that he had so much of a sense of preservation. He just loved beautiful scenery. He loved entertaining people with stories. When people came to visit the dells the place to go was the Bennett studio. And he had a magic lantern and he would show photographs with his magic lantern, which was like a slide projector, of the dells. 

And he would tell stories and tales about how he had been taking a photograph on the railroad tracks and the train came and he got off just in time. Or how once he was chased up a tree by a bear. He was a great storyteller. And he loved to tell stories about the war, about the Civil War. And people enjoyed that. And then when he was done telling his stories, they would buy his pictures. >> The golden age of studio photography. >> Yes. >> Sara Rath, it's been pleasure. Thanks for guiding us through the images of HH Bennett and the life and the times. 

>> Thank you very much, Norman. I was very pleased to be able to have the University of Wisconsin Press do such a beautiful job of reproducing Bennett's photographs in this book, but I also think it's a great story. >> And indeed it is and they are great photographs. You see the title of the book. You have seen it. And our biographer, Sara Rath, has been our guide today through the work of HH Bennett. I'm Norman Gilliland. Thanks for joining me. I hope you can be with me next time for University Place.