The Chapman Historical Museum in Glens Falls has just published Water & Light: S.R. Stoddard’s Lake George, a new work on the photography of Seneca Ray Stoddard.

The 160-page book features 150 of Stoddard’s photos, as well as some samples of his painting, sketches and cartography.

As a 19th century American photographer, S. R. Stoddard is often ranked with William Henry Jackson and Carlton Watkins, and the quality of his photographic compositions is compared with many of the Hudson River School painters. It is estimated Stoddard took some ten thousand images in the Adirondack Mountains alone.

Born in Wilton, NY, in 1843, Stoddard began his career in Troy, NY, painting interior murals for railway cars. He came to Glens Falls in 1864 and by 1867 had become a photographer, taking his earliest photographs in and around Glens Falls. A year later, he began to photograph Lake George.

During his career, Stoddard was also an accomplished writer, painter and cartographer, but he became nationally renowned for his photography. While Stoddard would eventually photograph throughout the United States, Europe and the Middle East, he repeatedly returned to Lake George.  There, until shortly before his death in 1917, he created hundreds of photographs of its hotels, steamboat landings, islands and dramatic shoreline.

Water & Light: S.R. Stoddard’s Lake George features an introductory essay by historian and author Joseph Cutshall-King, who was Director of the Chapman at the time the museum first obtained the Stoddard Collection in 1977. The essay features new research and explores why Stoddard’s place among the great painters and photographers of the late 19th century.

Published by the Chapman Historical Museum, Glens Falls, Water & Light: S.R. Stoddard’s Lake George is being offered in softbound for $29.95 and hardcover for $49.95, plus tax, shipping and handling.

For further information or to order the book, visit the Chapman’s website or call (518) 793-2826.