In Stoddard's Footsteps

In a career spanning the settling of the Adirondack Wilderness, the heyday of the guide, the steamship, and the grand hotel, pioneer photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard produced more than eight thousand images of the evolving landscape - the most comprehensive photo-documentary record of late nineteenth century life in the region. A skilled mapmaker, surveyor, illustrator and writer, Stoddard was an unabashed Adirondack promoter, as prolific with a pen as with a camera. From his Glens Falls studio, he and his assistants published photographic prints and stereographs, guidebooks, brochures, train schedules, newsletters and maps. More than a century after Stoddard focused his cameras on the region, renowned Adirondack photographer and writer Mark Bowie literally followed in his footsteps, faithfully re-photographing the exact locations of some of his classic images, revealing changes in the landscape and its people over the last one hundred to one hundred twenty-five years. It is a fascinating study, the results sometimes surprising, in every case, illuminating.