Cornelia Clarke

Cornelia Clarke (July 4, 1884 – September 29, 1936) was a nature photographer from Grinnell, Iowa. Over 1,200 of her photographs were published in magazines, encyclopedias, books and newspapers. Her earliest published photos were of her pet cats, Peter and Polly, dressed and posed imitating human activities. These popular photos were turned into a children's book. She also took a variety of natural landscape photographs, especially of the area around her home in Grinnell, Iowa. Many of the original photographs and glass plate negatives are in the collections of the Drake Community Library, Grinnell Historical Museum, and the State Historical Society of Iowa.

Early life and education Cornelia Clarke was born just north of Grinnell, Iowa on July 4, 1884. Her mother died within a few hours of her birth and Cornelia was raised by her father, Ray Clarke. Cornelia had a rather lonely childhood, spending most of her time alone or with her father. At a young age she closely observed her father as he took photographs. The first photographs she took were of her cats, using her father's equipment while he was out of the house. The photos had been accompanied by captions that outlined a story of two kittens who grew up together, fell in love, married, started a family, and did adult-like chores. The photos were very popular and by 1912 Cornelia had started a collaboration with Elizabeth Hays Wilkinson. Wilkinson had already authored several children's books and the two worked together to turn the story into a book. Published by Doubleday and Co. in 1912, Peter and Polly is a 97-page book. The photographs by Clarke appear throughout in colorized version. Many glass slides of the Peter and Polly photos are held by the Drake Community Library in Grinnell, Iowa. In addition, the Grinnell Historical Museum has multiple artifacts related to Cornelia's life, including her camera and numerous cards made with her photos. She offered additional insight in two articles for Photo Era: The American Journal of Photography. In these articles she detailed how she would bring the objects from the natural world into her home to stage them, recreating nature in her living room in order to allow for extreme closeups of plants without the advantage of a zoom lens. Through the work of Mr. Kaiser and members of the Grinnell Historical Museum, the glass plates were located, identified and indexed and a selection of 100 were digitized. An exhibit of her work was displayed at the Grinnell Area Arts Center Stewart Gallery and the Drake Community Library. In 2021, she was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame.

Notable publications including Cornelia Clarke photographs

A detailed list was compiled by Dan Kaiser and is available from Drake Community Library, in Grinnell, Iowa.

Photography periodicals American Photography (1923-1930) Camera Craft (1924) Photo-Era Magazine (1922-1925)

Encyclopedias World Book Encyclopedia (various editions, 1947–1987) Richards Topical Encyclopedia (1947) Grolier Encyclopedia (1960) The Book of Knowledge: The Children's Encyclopedia (1950) The Book of Popular Science (1957)

Science periodicals Nature Magazine (1925-1939) Science News-letter (1930-1937) Natural History (1936-1941) Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science (1928-1929)

Science textbooks and monographs Science of Animal Life: An Introduction to Zoology by William Morton Barrows (1927) Parade of the Animal Kingdom by Robert W. Hegner (1935) An Introduction to the Plant Kingdom by Norman H. Russel (1958) Insect People by Eleanor King and Wellmer Pessels (1937) Working with Nature: with 60 offset illustrations by Eleanor King and Wellmer Pessels (1940) Bats by Glover Morrill Allen (1939/1967 reprint) Animals without Backbones by Ralph Buchsbaum (1938) Biology and Human Welfare by James E. Peabody (1933) Biology and Human Affairs (1941) Biology for Today by Francis D. Curtis (1939)

Children's books The Baby Animal Zoo by William & Stella Nida (1928) Holiday Meadow by Edith M. Patch (1930) Holiday Pond by Edith Patch (1930) Holiday Hill by Edith Patch (1931) Nature and Science Readers by Edith Patch, Books 3-5 (1935) Child and Universe by Bertha Stevens (1931) The Child Goes Forth by Bertha Stevens (1936) Science Picture Parade by Davis Watson (1940) How Miracles Abound by Bertha Stevens (1941) Insect People by Eleanor King and Wellmer Pessels (1937) Man and the Animal World by Bernal Robinson Weimer (1951)

Newspapers Des Moines Register Cedar Rapids Gazette Detroit Free Press Los Angeles Times St. Louis Post-Dispatch Miami News "Peter and Polly" in Country Life in America (1911)

Personal life An automobile accident in 1929 was the beginning of the final years of Cornelia's life. Both she and her father were injured in the accident that took the life of the other driver. Soon after, Clarke's health began to fail, and in the 1930s she was diagnosed with cancer. She died on September 29, 1936, and is buried in Hazelwood Cemetery with her mother and father in Grinnell, Iowa.