- Howe, Sharon M. “Photography and the Making of Crater Lake National Park.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 103 (2002): 76-97.
- Robinson, Thomas. Oregon Photographers; Biographical History and Directory 1851-1917. Portland, Or.: Thomas Robinson.
Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Funding for preparing this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Funding for making preservation prints from original negatives was provided by Meyer Memorial Trust.
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Company photographs, Org. Lot 140, Oregon Historical Society Research Library
During the course of processing, many duplicate photographs were removed from the collection.
The Kiser Photo Co. photographs include images produced by the Kiser Brothers, the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Co., the Kiser Photo Co., and the Winter Photo Co. from 1901-circa 1927. Other imprints include Fred H. Kiser Studios, Kiser Studios, and Scenic America Company. The collection contains both vintage black-and-white and hand-colored prints, including stereographs and panoramic photographs, as well as copy prints made from original Kiser negatives. The bulk of the images are examples of Kiser's landscape and mountain photography in Montana, Oregon, and along the Columbia River Gorge and Columbia River Highway, among other places, as well as of various places in Portland, Or. Other subjects include the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Mo., 1904; the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Or., 1905; landscape photographs taken for various railroad companies, 1903-1916; photographs of ships and shipbuilding in the Portland, Or. area, taken for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, 1918-1919; and photos of Kiser studio buildings in Portland, 1909-1923.
The collection also contains contemporary photomechanical reproductions of Kiser photographs, dating from 1903-circa 1930. These include postcards, photomechanical prints both loose and in albums, and publications containing reproductions of Kiser work. There are also background materials that contain biographical notes Fred H. Kiser and the history of his work with photography that were gathered during collection processing and date from 1903-1999.
Many images in the collection were made by the Kiser Brothers or Kiser Photo Company and its photographers but were produced for sale to the public over a long period of time, first by the Kiser Photo Company and then the Winter Photo Company. After Kiser sold part of his business to Winter in 1915, it appears that Kiser continued to make prints from earlier images for which Winter held the negatives, possibly by making copy negatives from original prints. Photographer Benjamin Gifford also bought Kiser negatives and produced them for sale; many of the copy prints in this collection were made from Kiser negatives that are housed in the Gifford and Prentiss photograph collection, Org. Lot 982.
Note on dates and photographers’ negative numbers: Kiser and Winter often issued prints of the same images over a long period. Prints sometimes include copyright dates in the photographer’s imprint. The dates provided in this guide include: actual date of photograph if known, copyright date if known, or circa dates derived from photographers’ negative numbers and image content. Kiser Brothers did not use a negative numbering system as far as can be determined. Kiser Photo Co.’s earliest assigned numbers represent the firm’s output but also may be for images made by the Kiser Brothers but marketed later. They are low numbers preceded by an “x”. Kiser seems to have adopted a consecutive numbering system by about 1906. The numbers are handwritten in pencil on the verso of prints. After he purchased part of the business in 1915, Winter appears to have continued the consecutive numbering system from where Kiser Photo Company left off. After 1915, Kiser appears to have adopted a new numbering system, using a “C” prefix.
The collection is arranged into the following series and subseries:
Series A: Vintage prints by Kiser Brothers and Lewis and Clark Official Photographic Co., 1901-1905
- Subseries 1: Kiser Brothers, 1901-1905
- Subseries 2: Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, Mo., 1903-1904
- Subseries 3: Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Or., 1904-1905
Series B: Vintage prints by Kiser Photo Company, Scenic America Company, and Winter Photo Company, 1902-1929
- Subseries 1: Alaska, circa 1910
- Subseries 2: California, 1903-1915
- Subseries 3: Montana, 1909-1915
- Subseries 4: Oregon (except Portland), 1903-circa 1920
- Subseries 5: Portland, Or., 1906-1918
- Subseries 6: Columbia River Gorge, 1902-circa 1917
- Subseries 7: Washington, 1905-1914
- Subseries 8: View albums, circa 1905-1922
- Subseries 9: Work for railroad companies, 1903-1916
- Subseries 10: Emergency Fleet Corporation photographs, 1917-1919
- Subseries 11: Unidentified photographs, undated
Series C: Copy prints from original negatives by Kiser Studio Company and Scenic America Company, 1905-1929
- Subseries 1: Photographs of Kiser studios and advertising, 1909-1923
- Subseries 2: Places, 1901-1925
- Subseries 3: Portraits, 1914-1925
- Subseries 4: Work for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, 1918-1919
- Subseries 5: Other subjects, 1914-circa 1925
Series D: Photomechanical reproductions, published works, and ephemera, 1903-circa 1930
- Subseries 1: Postcards, 1903-circa 1930
- Subseries 2: Photomechanical prints, 1903-1905
- Subseries 3: Publications, 1904-1905
- Subseries 4: Ephemera, 1911
Series E: Background materials, 1903-1999
The Kiser Photo Company photographs were accumulated at the Oregon Historical Society from circa 1948-2004 from various sources. The collection was created from the following accessions:
Photo accession nos. 976D012, 982D166 (see Library accession no. 16207).
Library accession nos. 293, 8070, 9125, 9611, 9715, 12467, 16207 (see Photo accession no. 982D166), 21299, 21960, 23858, 24508, 24841, 25127, and 25498.
Finding aid prepared by Sharon M. Howe and Megan K. Friedel © 2006
The Oregon Historical Society Research Library contains the following collections that relate to the Kise Photo Company photographs:
Gifford and Prentiss photograph collection, Org. Lot 982, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. Contains original Kiser negatives from which many of the copy prints in this collection were made.
Spokane, Portland, & Seattle Railway photograph album, Album 271-B, Oregon Historical Society Research Library. Contains many photographs taken by Kiser, as well as other photographers, for the Railway, circa 1909 and earlier.
Fred H. Kiser's stock prospectus, "Filming the Old Country," is located in Mss. 2952, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
There may also be other original Kiser prints in the Self-Indexing Photo Files, including File #895-A (Redmond, Or.).
Other Kiser photographs of the studio at Crater Lake National Park are located in the Alex Sparrow collection, MS-591, at the Southern Oregon Historical Society in Medford, Or.
Collection is open to the public.
The Oregon Historical Society is the owner of the materials in the Kiser Photo Company photographs and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses, with the exception of the material listed below:
- Background material photocopied from the Mazamas Library. The Oregon Historical Society does not own the original items, and permission must be obtained by the user from the Mazamas Library in Portland, Or. before this material can be used for publication.
- Background material photocopied from the archives of Crater Lake National Park. The Oregon Historical Society does not own the original items, and permission must be obtained by the user from the Crater Lake National Park archives before this material can be used for publication.
Written permission must be obtained from the Research Library prior to any reproduction use. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all of the materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from the copyright owners.
http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv22241
Published
Published
Published
A drawing of Crater Lake, along with the text for a chant used by Will Steel's party at Crater Lake.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 103538
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 103537
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 10353
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Capt. O. C. (Oliver Cromwell) Applegate and Joaquin Miller in front of tent
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f4; OrHi 56449
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Crater Lake and Wizard Island in summer
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Crater Lake and Wizard Island in winter
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Climbing party on Mt. Scott, 1903. Oscar and Fred Kiser on right
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f4; OrHi 103537
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101867
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101868
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101869
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Left to right: Phil Metscham; Dr. Hill; Senator Fulton; Joaquin Miller; Will Steel.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101870
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101871
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101872
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101873
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Largest Tideland spruce tree in the world, 1903
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f5; OrHi 8311
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104708
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104715
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104716
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104717
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104719
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104731
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104735
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104736
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 67685
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; CN 039201A
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; CN 067685
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
California building, Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
New York building, Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f10; OrHi 102057
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Oregon building, Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Kiralfy's "Carnival of Venice", Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f11; OrHi 68756
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Stereograph of Guild's Lake and Government Buildings, Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 27230
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Handcolored photograph of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, Oregon, 1905
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104743; 170
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Black-and-white version of bb000377.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104729
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104707
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104709; 180
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104710
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104711
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104712
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Guild's Lake, "Bridge of Nations" and U.S. Government buildings in the background.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104713; 177
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104714; 179
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104718; 150
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104720
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104721; 146
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104722; 164
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104723; 149
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104724; 153
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104725; 151
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104726; 152
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104727
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104728
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104730
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 104732; 171
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
At right is the Agriculture and Horticulture building, at left is the Foreign Palace. Guild's Lake and U.S. Government Buildings in the background.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104733; 171
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Cowboys statue in the foreground.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104734; 166
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104737
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Left to right: Oregon Building; Oriental Palace, Foreign Palace.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104738
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104739
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 104740
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 39201; b6.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3326; b6.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 25115; b6.f26
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 57845; b6.f26
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of personnel, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of rear deck of boat with personnel, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of ice on river or lake, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of ship at dock, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of ship deck with men and boxes of equipment, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of ship underway, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of dogsled, Claude Ewing Rusk expedition to Mt. McKinley, 1910; Kiser image #R-802
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14A
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14; 215
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14; 205
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14; 206
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f14A; R 813
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Apistoki Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of men fishing at Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of man on horse in woods on trail to Avalanche Basin, Glacier Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of man fishing in Avalanche Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Blackfoot Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Blackfoot Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Canyon Creek, Glacier National Park, Montana, Cracker Lake trip, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f19
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view looking south from Castle Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of climber near summit of Castle Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Chief Falls, Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f21
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Mt. Cleveland summit, Belly River region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of head of Cracker Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f23
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of wildflowers, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains at head of Cut Bank River, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Cut Bank River area, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains at head of Cut Bank River, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Dawn Mist Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Contact print of Mt. Fusilade, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Mt. Fusilade, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view north from summit of Fusilade Mountain (elevation 9000 feet), Carnation Lake below, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view from the Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view northeast from the Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view looking south along the Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view looking south along the Garden Wall, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view of the "Garden Wall," Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph "on the trail" around the base of Goat Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of man on horse on trail, Going to the Sun Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Going to the Sun Mountain from St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Going to the Sun Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Going to the Sun Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Golden Stair Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f31
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Golden Stair Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f31
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Grinnell Mountain from Lake McDermott, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Grinnell Mountain from the "Garden Wall," 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Mountain from the Garden Wall, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Lake and Gould Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Lake and Gould Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Grinnell Lake and Gould Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Lake and Grinnell Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Lake and Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view northeast from Gunsight Pass to Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view northeast from Gunsight Pass to Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view northeast from Gunsight Pass to Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view northeast from Gunsight Pass to Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of pack train on west side of Gunsight Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Gunsight Lake area, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view east from Gunsight Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Heaven's Peak, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f34
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Heaven's Peak, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f34
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Heaven's Peak, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f34
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Helen Lake and Hanging Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Helen Lake and Hanging Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Helen Lake and Hanging Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Helen Lake and Hanging Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Helen Cascades, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of pack train near Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of area near Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of area near Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of area near Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view looking north from Indian Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of waterfall, Indian Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Mt. Jackson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f38
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored proof photograph of Mt. Jackson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f38
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake Llian, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake Llian and Gould Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake Llian and Gould Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Mountain, Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Mt. Wilbur, Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of cabins at Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1913
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Grinnell Mountain, Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Grinnell Mountain, Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDermott, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake McDonald Lodge boat docks and Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Small proof photograph of head of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Enlarged photograph of head of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of head of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of shoreline and peaks, St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored proof photograph of shoreline and peaks, St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake St. Mary and Going to the Sun Mountain, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake St. Mary and Going to the Sun Mountain, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Proof print, Lake St. Mary, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake St. Mary, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lake St. Mary, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Enlarged photograph of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of storm on St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Enlarged photograph of storm on St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Enlarged photograph of storm on St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of storm on St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of "sun chalet" and Chief Mountain, St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of "sun chalets" and Chief Mountain, St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of chalet on St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of chalets on St. Mary's Lake at the narrows and head of the lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Going to the Sun Mountain from St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of wildflowers, Lake St. Mary area, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view across St. Mary's Lake to Kootenai Mountains, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Mountain, Lake St. Mary, horsemen in foreground, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Lake St. Mary, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of "sunset" from St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of St. Mary's Creek and Little Chief Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of peaks, Lake St. Mary, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of fish caught from Lake St. Mary's, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f2
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Lincoln Peak, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f3
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Little Chief Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Little Chief Mountain, Lake St. Mary's, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of view north from summit of Luscilade Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of view north from foot of Luscilade Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of view north from summit of Luscilade Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of view north from summit of Luscilade Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of McDermott Falls, Swift Current River, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f6
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of McDermott Falls, Swift Current River, Grinnell Mountain, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f6
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Morning Eagle Falls from Piegan Pass Trail, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f7
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Pollock Mountain, Swift Current Region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f9
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Red Eagle Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Mountain as seen from trail on Goat Mountain Glacier National Park, Montana, 1911
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana. Panel four of a five-panel panorama, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana. Panel five of a five-panel panorama, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of beargrass, Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of wildflowers, Red Eagle Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of wildflowers, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountain view, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountain view, hikers on edge of cliff, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Red Rock Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Rock Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Red Rock Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Mt. Rockwell, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f13
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of trail, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of mountains, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of road, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified lake, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified mountain peak, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of crevasse and glacier, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified lake, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of pack train at corral, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of pack train at corral, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of men at bunkhouse, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of men at bunkhouse, Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Swift Current region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of man fishing at base of Trick Falls, Two Medicine River, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of waterfall, Two Medicine Lakes region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of beargrass, Two Medicine Lakes region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Two Medicine Lake region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Two Medicine Lake from near summit of Mt. Apistoki, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Two Medicine Pass, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of lower lake, Two Medicine Lakes, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of middle lake, Two Medicine Lake region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph, Mt. Reynolds, Two Medicine Lake region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Two Medicine Lake region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of waterfall, Two Medicine Lakes region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Mt. Reynolds, Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Mt. Reynolds, Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of wildflowers, Two Medicine Lake region, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f19
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Mt. Wilbur wildflowers, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of trout caught on unidentified river, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f21
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of man fishing unidentified river, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f21
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Belton, Montana, train station and hotel, 1911. Belton is now called West Glacier.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Belton, Montana, hotel, 1911. Belton is now called West Glacier.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Belton, Montana, train station and hotel, 1911. Belton is now called West Glacier.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Belton, Montana, hotel, 1911. Belton is now called West Glacier.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of cabins at Hotel Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f23
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Fred Kiser with cook, Great Northern Railroad Photographic Special Car, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Fred Kiser with cook, Great Northern Railroad Photographic Special Car, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f24
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Great Northern Railroad tracks, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f26
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Blackfeet Indians crossing stream at Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Blackfeet Indians at Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Blackfeet Indians by tipi at Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Blackfeet Indians near Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of pack train, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of pack train, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of trail, Glacier National Park, Montana, circa 1910
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified view, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified view, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified view, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of unidentified view, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f17; 4455
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f18; 4423
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f18; 4438
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f20; 4717
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f24; 5643
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f26; 5312
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f27; 4449
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f28; 4735
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f31; 4715
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f31; 4715
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f32; 4718
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f33; 4439
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Hand-colored version of bb000158.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36; 4710
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f36; 4408
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43; 4459
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f43; 4459
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f1; 5687
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f2; 5582
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f3; 4431
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f6; 5708
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f8; 5364
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f12; 4724
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f15; 4704
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f16; 4726
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f17; 5654
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f19; 5669
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f22; 5036
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f17; 4458
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f18; OrHi 83993
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f20; 1740
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f21; 4957
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f25;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 94794
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 56382
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 23650
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 23649
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Hand-colored photograph of Crater Lake and Wizard Island.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101730
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; CN 019220
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view of Astoria, Oregon. Panel one of three panel panorama
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view of Astoria, Oregon. Panel two of three panel panorama
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view of Astoria, Oregon. Panel three of three panel panorama
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f31
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of the Mill Race, Eugene, Oregon, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f31
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of the Mill Race, Eugene, Oregon, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f31
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Villard Hall, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Machinery Building and rose hedge, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, circa 1920
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view of University of Oregon campus, Eugene, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view of University of Oregon Campus, circa 1920
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photographic view of University of Oregon campus driveway and grounds, circa 1920
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photographic view of University of Oregon campus from the Mill Race, Eugene, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Steamboats "Telephone" and "Stranger" at The Dalles waterfront, 1907
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f34
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of view north from Mussel House Point, Bayocean, Oregon, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of view north from Mussel House Point, Bayocean, Oregon, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f36
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of coastal view from Bird Rocks, Cannon Beach, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of coastal view from Chapman Point, Cannon Beach, Oregon, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon, 1912
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of Cape Mears Light in moonlight, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f.38
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Tillamook Bay from 9th Avenue, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f.39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Photograph of Tillamook Bay from 9th Avenue in moonlight, 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f.39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of unidentified beach and pier photographed for Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway, 1909
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of unidentified beach, circa 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Handcolored photograph of unidentified beach, circa 1908
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f3
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f27; 3343
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f28; 3396
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f29; 1249
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f31; 1262
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f33; 4113
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b2.f35; 3862
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f17; 3331
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f19; 3837
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f21; 3566
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f21; 1782
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Party crossing Eliot Glacier crevasse.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f23; 5558
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f23; 5555
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f24; 3459
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f26; 3088
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f28; 3599
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f30; 5104
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f33; 3756
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4.f34; 3700
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5113
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 1972
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4791
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5997
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5710
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 78419
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Deschutes River, Kiser # 5073
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 88021
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Deschutes River and Horseshoe Bend, Kiser # 5724
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 5284
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5081
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3924
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 6050
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3879
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3298
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Strawberries and cane berries
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4587
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4019
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5889
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3304
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4508
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
View of Mineral Peak from Mystic Lake
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5931
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 58429
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 74419
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4151
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Second panel of two panel panorama
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5890
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 248; b7.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 175; b7.f21
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 152; b7.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 17; b7.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 19; b7.f27
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 5; b7.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 9; b7.f32
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101854
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101730
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101855
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101857
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101858
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101856
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101859
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101860
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101861
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101975
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101877
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101877a
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101904
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101921
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101939
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Colored by Luetters
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101940
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Colored by Luetters
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101941
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Colored by Luetters
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101942
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101943
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101944
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;; b6.f37
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3243; b6.f38
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 39132; b6.f39
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 37934; b6.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 5234; b6.f44
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 23060; b6.f45
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway, Astoria line photograph album, circa 1912. Album 278-A; OrHi 94799
http://librarycatalog.ohs.org/EOSWebOPAC/OPAC/Details/Record.aspx?BibCode=11557876
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 23059; b6.f47
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3835; b2.f35
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 48833
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Colored print of Mt. Hood
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 105970
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Lake panorama at Mount Hood
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 105973
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f4; OrHi 101730
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4802
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4792
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4778
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4785
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4803
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4781
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4786
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4802
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4803
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4786
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; Kiser 4791
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 66585
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 1128
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 1131
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 40; b8.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 111; b8.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 322; b8.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 85; b8.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 88; b8.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 371; b8.f6
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 46; b8.f7
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3460; b6.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3397; b6.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3400; b6.f2
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3336; b6.f3
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3401; b6.f4
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3005; b6.f5
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3407; b6.f6
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3337; b6.f7
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3139; b6.f8
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 1228; b6.f9
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3404; b6.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 994; b6.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 995; b6.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Panorama stitched from bb000424 and bb000425
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 994; Kiser 995; b6.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 1225; b6.f13
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 1222; b6.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3432; b6.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 1221; b6.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3434; b6.f15
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;; b6.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3616; b6.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3912; b6.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3604; b6.f19
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3424; b6.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3572; b4.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3382; b6.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 5387; b6.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 3472; b6.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
W.S. Ladd residence, Portland, OR., circa 1907
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f2; OrHi 94243
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f3; F47
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f4; 1827
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f7; b3189
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f7; 3178
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f10; 3231
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f9; 3560
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 67579
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 63295
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f19; OrHi 67583
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f21; 5956
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f22; 3190
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f23; 3537
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f24; 3197
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f25; 5903
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 63303
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f27; 2104
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f28; 3421
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f31; 3195
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f31; 3196
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f36; 5573
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f37; 3585
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f38; 1629
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f39; 3576
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f40; 3507
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f41; 1759
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f41; 3580
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f42; 2027
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f43; 5957
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f46; 5963
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f47; 5965
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f48; 3577
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f49; 3535
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f50; 5959
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f51; C129
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 105974
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Metlako Falls, Eagle Creek, Columbia River Gorge.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Metlako Falls, Eagle Creek, Columbia River Gorge.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Latourell Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Latourell Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Latourell Falls Creek, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Latourell Falls Creek, Columbia River Gorge, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
The Needles, Columbia River, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f23
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
The Needles, Columbia River, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f23
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Oneonta Gorge, Columbia River Highway, Oregon
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Oneonta Gorge, Columbia River Highway, Oregon
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f25
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Lataurelle Bridge, Columbia River Highway.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Lataurelle Bridge, Columbia River Highway.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f43
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Multnomah Falls.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f46
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Multnomah Falls.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f46
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Sailboat on the Columbia River.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Sailboat on the Columbia River.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Sailboat on the Columbia River.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Bishop's Cap near Sheppards Dell, Columbia River Highway, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f49
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Bishop's Cap near Sheppards Dell, Columbia River Highway, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f49
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Sheppards Dell, Columbia River Highway, Oregon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f49
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Mount Hood from Bull Run Reservoir taken 1908.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f19
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b5.f22
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b24.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f7
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 5739
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b1.f2; OrHi 3711
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f11; 1549
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b3.f13; 3183
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3486
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b4371
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4340
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5291
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5569
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3154
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Mazamas camp for Mt. Baker expedition.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 53720
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 53166
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 2287
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 3235
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4531
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4985
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4910
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4947
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4955
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4957
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5015
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 5016
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4692
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; 4693
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 136; b8.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 67347; b6.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 80303; b6.f40
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 49196; b6.f41
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Kiser 5739; b6.f42
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 105971
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 105972
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Chelan Canyon.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Published
Published
Published
Published
Brothers Fred H. (1878-1955) and Oscar H. Kiser (1883-1905) started photography as a hobby, but Fred gained recognition as one of the most successful commercial photographers and one of the best artistic mountain photographers in the nation during the first quarter of the 20th century. Through his Kiser Photo Company and other enterprises, he produced and sold prints, albums, stereographs, postcards, and glass lantern slides, many of which were hand-colored in oils. As the official photographer for the Lewis and Clark Exposition at Portland, Or., in 1905, Kiser gained a wide audience. His photographs helped promote Crater Lake National Park and establish Glacier National Park. During World War I, Kiser also served as director of photography for the Emergency Fleet Corporation’s Oregon Division.
Before he was ready to embark on a career in photography, Fred studied business and commercial law at Portland Business College from 1898-1901. He and his brother, Oscar, explored photography as a hobby, which developed into a business in 1902, when they discovered that scenic images of the Columbia River Gorge appealed to visitors at their parents’ Columbia Beach Hotel in Warrendale, Or. One of their early commissions established Fred’s on-going relationship with Crater Lake National Park in 1903, when photographer and park promoter William G. Steele invited them to photograph a promotional expedition from Medford, Or. to the newly-created national park. Fred and Oscar Kiser also established a studio in the Abington Building in Portland in 1904, under the name of Kiser Bros., Scenic Photographers. They issued a hardbound book of scenic views taken during the 1903 Crater Lake expedition, Pacific Coast Pictures, under their own imprint, Wonderland Souvenir Company, Inc., the first of many businesses that Fred created during the next three decades. In 1904, Fred Kiser worked as the official photographer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., and in 1905, he established the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Official Photographic Company during the exposition's duration in Portland that year, with himself as vice-president and director of photography. The company published many of his photographs in a Souvenir Book of Views of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Fair.
Fred and Oscar Kiser's partnership as Kiser Brothers ended in 1905, even before Oscar’s accidental drowning in November of that year. Following this, Fred established the Kiser Photo Company in the Lumber Exchange Building in Portland. By this time, he had perfected a system for mountain photography expeditions, and from 1903 through 1914, he provided official photography services for most of the Mazamas’ annual climbing outings to Northwest peaks. Fred Kiser recruited teams of energetic, mountaineering photographers who could get the heavy cameras and other equipment to practically any remote place and mountaintop in the Northwest. While his teams made many climbing photographs, Kiser’s marketing depended on the scenic views they produced during these expeditions.
Color made Kiser’s work nationally known and helped to create and promote national parks in the Northwest, including Crater Lake and Glacier. He selected the name “Artograph” to describe his “hand-colored in oil” images. Kiser developed the art of hand coloring into a mass-production line that allowed him to market his Artographs widely as individual images, in mounted sets, and in leather-covered albums. In 1907, he assembled a touring show of approximately 1,000 of his Artograph scenic views, which traveled to Oregon locations and to 20 cities across the country, including New York and Chicago. Maie Ely, who had made her name as an art colorist with a portfolio of Yellowstone Park images, hand-colored these photographs in oils.
During the decade before World War I, Kiser embarked on a whirlwind of photographic and promotional enterprises. The Southern Pacific and Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railroads used many Kiser images in their promotional literature, but his contract with the Great Northern Railway in Montana had the greatest impact on the National Park system. Beginning about 1909, Kiser and his team photographed the spectacular scenery of northwestern Montana, working from headquarters in a specially outfitted railway car provided by the Great Northern. An exhibit of more than 100 of his Artograph prints at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., was credited with providing the final push to gain Congressional approval for establishing Glacier National Park in 1910. Kiser marketed his Glacier Park photographs at the Great Northern’s tourist facilities for many years.
After several moves in its early history, Kiser Photo Company, with Fred as president, operated from a studio and sales gallery at 240 East 32nd Street, Portland, Or., from 1909 through 1914. He also developed a national sales network through agents in eastern cities, including John Wanamaker in New York and Philadelphia. Clarence L. Winter, who had extensive experience in mountain photography and operated a studio in Eugene, Or., joined the company in 1911 as a photographer and vice-president. In 1915, Kiser sold the studio operations to Winter so that he could concentrate on photographing the new Columbia River Highway, establishing a photo concession at Multnomah Falls Lodge, and other enterprises, including a major exhibition for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco that year. Winter retained much of the negative collection and took the studio’s master colorist, Frederick P. Luetters, with him. Together, the two men produced and marketed hand-colored, mounted images of exceptional quality, but Winter closed the business when Luetters joined the U.S. Army in 1918. Luetters settled in New Jersey after World War I. Winter moved to Vancouver, Wa., and died in 1926.
Fred Kiser reorganized his operations as Kiser’s Scenic Photo Studio at 773 Milwaukie Avenue in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland, Or., with various sales outlets in downtown Portland during ensuing years. World War I interrupted Kiser’s mountain photography and sales of his scenic views. The Emergency Fleet Corporation requisitioned his studio in Sellwood and appointed him director of photography for the Oregon District; in this capacity, Kiser made many images of shipbuilding activities, primarily at Portland shipyards. After the war, he organized the Scenic America Company to market his Artographs, using the popular “See America First” slogan in his advertising, and built a motion picture studio, which opened in 1922 and operated for a few years.
The interruptions of World War I did not kill one of Kiser’s biggest dreams: obtaining a concession for a photo studio at Crater Lake. At least as early as 1911, Kiser proposed such a concession, but for much of the next decade he had to content himself with displaying and selling his photographs through the Crater Lake Company’s facilities, including Crater Lake Lodge. By 1921, he finally won a photographic concession that permitted the Scenic America Company to build a studio near the rim of Crater Lake. In 1926, he added a darkroom to the building, which allowed him to provide one-day film developing service to Crater Lake tourists. After Kiser’s disagreements with other principals in the Scenic America Company sent the firm into bankruptcy in 1927, he incorporated Kiser’s with a group of Grants Pass businessmen. The new company opened a sales gallery in Grants Pass while continuing to operate the studio concession at Crater Lake. However, disagreements with his investors soon destroyed the new company, and Kiser relinquished his Crater Lake studio to the National Park Service in 1929. He moved to California, spending much of the rest of his life in the Los Angeles area.
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 390
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 21; b7.f2
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 418; b7.f8
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 420; b7.f8
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 373; b7.f9
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 452; b7.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 397; b7.f10
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 456; b7.f12
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 427; b7.f13
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 396; b7.f13
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 400; b7.f16
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 390; b7.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 103539; b7.f18
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 101938
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 450; b8.f11
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 56563
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b8.f14; Gi c 356
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b8.f18; Gi c 140
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b8.f22; Gi c 174
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b8.f26; Gi c 479
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 60
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 409; b8.f14
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 28; b8.f17
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 510; b8.f20
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Cartoon promoting the purchase of Oregon goods.
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 478; b8.f21
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 439; b8.f28
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 145; b8.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 100198; b7.f1
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 225
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 237
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 239
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 271
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 284
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 230
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 238
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b9.f8; Gi c 240
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 267
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; Gi c 241
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b9.f3; Gi c 215
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b9.f3; Gi c 2888a
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b9.f4; Gi c 308
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; b9.f4; Gi c 318
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140;; b6.f29
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published
Kiser Photo Co. photographs, 1901-1999; bulk: 1901-1927.; Org. Lot 140; OrHi 35794; b6.f30
No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/
Published