| | | Benjamin Strauss and Homer Peyton
Celebrity portraits
The most regarded partnership in American photographic history is that of Southworth and Hawes, two Boston daguerreotypists. Working as a team, they brought together artistic and technical aspects of photography. Their photographs have long been deemed in a class by themselves. But partnerships like theirs have been mostly short lived or non-existent in the 150 years since the beginnings of photography.
In this online exhibit, the public has been given an opportunity to view the work of two great 20th century photographic artists, Benjamin Strauss and Homer Peyton. They, like Southworth and Hawes, worked as partners, and they also specialized in the portrait. The partners did for Kansas City in the early part of the 20th century what Southworth and Hawes had done for Boston fifty years earlier.
Benjamin Strauss trained with his brother, the artist-photographer, Julius Caesar Strauss at his atelier in St. Louis in the 1890s. After years of apprenticeship, working in his brother’s shadow, Strauss moved on to Kansas City where he bought a portrait studio.
Around 1907, he met another artist and fellow bachelor, Homer Peyton. Soon they became partners, sharing their lives and their art. Together they produced some of the most exciting and intriguing portraits of the day. For several years they also ran a studio in New York City.
Strauss and Peyton associated with celebrities who played the Orpheum Circuit coming through Kansas City year after year. The partners ran two studios, one in town for the local blue bloods, and another studio after 1914 in the lobby at the Hotel Muehlebach, for famous out-of-towners. This allowed the two photographers to mingle with and photograph such legends as Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Caruso, and Evelyn Nesbit.
The celebrities loved the artistic and flattering results of the portraits. The sitting cards still exist, located in the Jackson County Historical Society, and they verify that artists as famous as Pickford or Jolson would order publicity and personal portraits from Strauss-Peyton for up to four or five hundred dollars at a time.
Homer Peyton often added flamboyant touches to the large portraits. He would draw on the finished print with crayon or pencil, and he would manipulate the negative to create unusual backgrounds. He succeeded in producing dramatic chiaroscuro effects that were popular during that time in the movies and on stage but effects that rarely had been seen in photographs until now. Making copies or studio prints for themselves, Strauss-Peyton had them inscribed by the sitters who were more than willing to praise the talents of the two photographers.
Strauss-Peyton worked together from 1908 to 1927. After the end their partnership, Strauss moved back to Cleveland, where he opened another photo studio. Soon after, Peyton sold the studio in Kansas City to his employees and headed out west
For decades the collection of Strauss-Peyton lay undiscovered. First it sat in the drawers of their studio; then in the home of one of the employees; then it passed on to a son of an employee. Finally, at the beginning of the 21st century, the portraits surfaced again.
This significant discovery of the collaborative work between Strauss and Peyton allows the public an opportunity to see the genius of two master photographers and artists working and creating in their prime during a fascinating and early time of American theatre and movie history.
A book containing a selection of the works of Strauss-Peyton is available from Stephen White, P.O. Box 1664, Studio City, CA. 91614, USA.
Strauss-Peyton: Celebrity and Glamour with an essay by Gail Buckland (Stephen White Editions, 2006). [ISBN-10: 0-9768804-4-X ISBN-13: 978-0-9768804-4-8]
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