Let’s imagine ourselves in the United States at the end of the 19th century. A new ideal for female beauty is born, they are the Gibson Girls: modern because they study, but conventional because they are looking for a husband and would never ask for the female vote. This phenomenon is in contrast to the New Woman, who wants greater autonomy, claims new activities for women, is a suffragist and is part of first-wave feminism. An example of a New Woman would be the pioneering photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston.
Against this backdrop, George Eastman commercialises a portable, cheap and easy-to-use camera in 1893. He advertises it to the modern woman, whom he calls the Kodak Girl: young, independent, and working in and out of home. This facilitates the incorporation of women into photography. Whilst in the United States there were around 300 female photographers in the 1890s, there would be 5 thousand in the 1920s. There is a perception that women can perform this role, as they had previously done as librarians. Although in the beginning, it was considered a hobby for them.
Great photographers emerge, such as Gertrude Käsebier, who promotes the entry of girls into Clarence White’s school. Ruth, therefore, is not an exception, not even in the recording of traditional ways of life. We have the example of other students at White, such as Laura Gilpin, Doris Ulmann and Alice D. Atkinson, who also worked at the Hispanic.
As opposed to Ruth, some of her contempories are involved in politics, have their own photographic projects, or claim to be artists. In contrast, Ruth specializes in regional costumes and the Hispanic named her curator of costumes in 1954. Perhaps that explains why she is not mentioned in many publications on photography, despite the quality of her work. At the same time, she is not part of the main trends of the time, which move between pictorialism and straight photography. Ruth was trained in pictorialism, represented by Clarence White, who sees photography as art, approaching painting and proposing to intervene manually on the negative. As we have already mentioned, from this tendency she learned above all the use of light, so useful in works like this, as can be seen in the image in which Ruth appears in the Sar River looking for the best angle. However, her work sometimes seems closer to straight photography, which gives priority to the language of the camera, without interfering with the images or looking for forced poses, having a more direct dialogue with reality.
That is not to say that Ruth is not technically and professionally demanding. While in Galicia, she develops her own ideology. She wants to use images to portray ideas that generate knowledge. She believes that photography has two properties that occur in unison: the first documents, such as a tree in its physical location, and the second reveals the inner life of that tree, silent and invisible.
Up to the 1920s, we only know of two female photographers in Santiago. One is María Cardarelly, who had a studio in Rúa do Hórreo between 1864 and 1866, known today for the photographs she took of Rosalía de Castro. The other is Juana Cabello, who set up a studio in Rúa do Franco around 1884, and then rented another one in Rúa do Vilar, although she died shortly after. In the rest of Galicia, there were other professional photographers, although they were less than a dozen, including Cándida Otero. Ruth’s contemporaries in Mondariz-Balneario included Luísa Pardo and, from 1926, her niece, Rosina. Also working in Mondariz was Isabel Crespo, a portrait artist who had a photo gallery in the spa resort.
We’ve travelled a long way on this stop and we are actually pursuing Ruth and Alfred in their early days in Compostela. Ruth complains about the weather, which does not let her towels dry, and fears that her fingers will grow spider webs from the humidity, although
‘The thing hardest to endure was that the barber who washed my hair had no means of drying it and sent me away with trickles running down my neck. But I should have known better than to go to the barber; in Santiago ladies had their hair done at home.’
Despite everything, they love the city: when it rains, they walk underneath the arcades, drink tea in Café Suízo on Rúa Nova, question the authenticity of some pilgrims, photograph children playing with spinning top or, sneakily, two lovers
‘This is called pelando la pava or rascando la pava, which, literally translated, sounds very unpleasant, but it must be more delightful than it sounds, for it is said to be one of the principal occupations of the university students. It seems that the novios in this case would develop a permanently dislocated neck, for they stand in this posture for hours at the time.’
In this Manor House, she takes two photographs that may well represent pictorialism and straight photography.
Let’s go now to the Post Office; we are entering the last third of our walk.