Rose Clark

"Miss M., of Washington", by Rose Clark and Elizabeth Flint Wade. Photogravure published in Camera Notes, Vol 4 No 4, 1901 Harriet Candace "Rose" Clark (1852 – November 28, 1942) was an early 20th-century American painter and pictorial photographer. She is best known for the photographs she exhibited with Elizabeth Flint Wade under their joint names, either as "Rose Clark and Elizabeth Flint Wade" or as "Misses Clark and Wade".

Life Harriet Candace "Rose" Clark was born in 1852 in La Port, Indiana. She was trained as a painter and taught painting and drawing in the 1880s at Saint Margaret’s School in Buffalo, New York. One of her students was Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Clark later designed and restored Luhan’s villa in Florence, Italy.

Beginning in 1890, she became active as a photographer and worked independently until 1898. Sometime in the late 1890s, she met Wade, and the two began their twelve-year collaboration.

Clark apparently learned some of her photographic artistry from Käsebier; later in her life she said she owed Käsebier for "any success she had with a camera".

About 1920, she moved from Buffalo to New York City, where she advertised her portraits and other paintings for substantial amounts (up to $2,000 for full-length portraits).

Misses Clark and Wade "Annetje", an 1898 platinum print by Clark and Wade, with both of their initials in the bottom corner. For reasons that have never been explained, Clark and Wade began exhibiting and publishing photos under their joint names beginning in 1899. For many years, it was assumed that Clark was the artist who took all of the photographs and Wade was the technician who developed and printed them. Clark herself alluded to this type of arrangement in a letter to Stieglitz in 1900: “Mrs. Wade is very dilatory – and in order to get the photographs you ask for… I will have to prod her daily.”

Their collaboration apparently ended around 1910. The reason for the dissolution of their joint effort is not known, although it might have been due to a change in the health of Wade, who died five years later.