Two deaf sisters - early pioneers of photography
I’ve long been frustrated by how histories of photography omit the contributions of deaf people. So imagine my delight on discovering the work of two deaf sisters - Frances Allen (1854-1941) and Mary Allen (1858-1941).
For over 40 years, the sisters worked as two of the USA’s leading commercial photographers and made thousands of fine art portraits and landscapes.
Frances (above) and Mary (below) inherited genes that left them progressively deaf during childhood and totally deaf as adults.
Growing up a in village in rural Massachusetts, USA, Frances and Mary were largely self-taught and did all the developing, printing, retouching and mounting themselves.
Their home studio’s photographic darkroom was upstairs in a spare bedroom while a ground floor living room served as a gallery for selling prints to visitors.
At the height of their career, their images were published by leading national magazines, featured in Kodak advertisements and sought after by collectors.
Frances and Mary exhibited at the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900 gaining international recognition for their work. This led to one leading critic describing the sisters as 'two of the Foremost Women Photographers in America.’
Another reviewer wrote: "The Misses Allen use their camera in the same spirit with which a painter uses his brush… their sense of composition is poetic."
Francis and Mary remained single all their lives and were later involved in the suffragette movement that campaigned for women’s right to vote.
In the last 11 years of her life, Frances lost her sight too, and the sisters began to communicate through hands-on signs.
Lifelong creative soulmates, they both died in their 80s within four days of each other.
You can also read my blog about Britain’s First Deaf Photographer.