Fortuna, California: Art and Printing by the Art and Commercial Classes, Fortuna High School, 1918.
Price: $2,200.00
Softcover. First edition. Folio. Handcolored illustrations and tipped-in photographs. Mimeograph leaves string-tied into printed paper wrappers. Contains eight gelatin silver photographs each with the signature of Emma Bell Richart Freeman of Eureka, California in the plate. Sizes vary slightly but most are approximately 6" x 4".. Small chips and tears on the yapped edges of the wrappers, very good. Yearbook for a small town (Senior Class of about 20 students) in Northern California, with beautifully accomplished illustrations by the students, enhanced by the photographs. Also contains short fiction, poems, class histories, etc.
Born in Nebraska, photographer Emma Richart moved first to Denver where she met Edmund Freeman, they married and opened a stationary and art supply shop in San Francisco while she studied painting. The shop was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and they moved to Eureka where they opened an art supply shop and photography studio. Emma's romanticized portraits of Native Americans did much to court public sympathy and her principle model was chosen to lead the parade opening the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. A romantic liaison at that time lead to scandal and divorce. She continued her work, but moved back to San Francisco in 1919. She died there in 1928 at the age of 48. The photographic historian Peter E. Palmquist wrote: "Emma brought a unique vision to subject matter, for her approach was heroic, her subject treatment allegorical, and her study painterly. Her surviving photographs clearly illustrate her training in fine arts. Her groundbreaking efforts were made almost entirely on her own; in fact, her contemporaries in the region were purely traditional photographers. She alone enjoyed the reputation of 'artist with a camera'."
While the relatively prosaic yearbook portrait photos probably don't rate such high praise, they are nevertheless exceptionally uncommon, and this well-designed yearbook is rare. *OCLC* locates no copies.
Item #415766
