Lucy Wallace Porter

Lucy Wallace Porter (January 23, 1876 – September 19, 1962), also known as Lucy Bryant Wallace, was an American photographer. In 1912 she married the Harvard medievalist, Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933). His published works included Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads and Spanish Romanesque Sculpture. He is known to have been an innovative “scholar-photographer” though later critical studies have shown that Porter was the principal photographer who accompanied him on his travels from 1919 onwards.

Kathryn Brush (University of Western Ontario, Canada) has researched Porter's contribution to her husband's work and concluded by recognising her as a major photographer in her own right. She then enrolled in Yale's School of Music within one of the first classes to admit women in 1895–1896. Porter does not appear to have any formal training in large-format photography. Rather, it was immediately after her wedding (when the couple sailed for Europe) when she began to experiment with the medium. During this period, Kingsley Porter taught Wallace Porter how to operate a large-format view camera equipped with glass plate negatives. Kathryn Brush (University of Western Ontario, Canada) has researched Porter's contribution to her husband's work. According to Brush, the lessons were accompanied by the manual Fotografia per i dilettanti (Photography for Amateurs) by Giovanni Muffone. By the late 1970s the majority of the Porters' photographic history had been destroyed as a result of the 'deteriorating and highly flammable cellulose nitrate negatives'.

Exhibitions An exhibition titled Camera Woman Along the Medieval Pilgrimage Roads: The Early 20th-Century Photography of Lucy Wallace Porter was held at Harvard University from August to November 2018. It described Porter as 'one of the most influential women photographers in the field of art history during the twentieth century'. The exhibition was curated by Kathryn Brush (University of Western Ontario) and Joanna Bloom (Photographic Resources Librarian, Harvard Fine Arts Library). Upon her death, her estate was bequeathed to Harvard.