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Lou Goodale Bigelow

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Lou Goodale Bigelow
Born
Lou Adelaide Bigelow

(1884-11-24)November 24, 1884
DiedJuly 31, 1968(1968-07-31) (aged 83)
San Diego, California, U.S.
NationalityUSA
Known forPhotography

Lou Goodale Bigelow (November 24, 1884 – July 31, 1968) was an early 20th century American photographer.

Born to photographer Lyman Goodale Bigelow and his photographic assistant and wife Ada in St. Joseph, Missouri, Lou Adelaide Goodale Bigelow grew up in Ronan, Montana. She learned the art of photography from her father, Lyman Goodale Bigelow, and worked in Kalispell, Montana as an assistant to Roland W. Reed, a photographer of Native Americans who produced striking images of members of the Blackfoot nation.

She accompanied Reed to California in early 1915, where he set up a studio in Coronado and showed photographs in the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition; Bigelow purchased the studio from Reed in November of that year when he returned to Kalispell.[1]

She later set up her own studio in San Diego, California. Over a career of more than 30 years, she specialized in commercial portraits of guests staying at Hotel del Coronado.[2] Her portraits were frequently published in the San Diego Union newspaper; among her clients was Wallis Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor.[3][4] Notable subjects included stage celebrities.[5] In later life, Bigelow painted portraits and landscapes.[6][7]

Bigelow was the subject of a 2000 exhibition "Lou Goodale Bigelow: An early Twentieth-Century Female Photographer and Artist" at the Coronado Museum of History and Art.[7]

References

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  1. ^ "The Reed Studio". Coronado Eagle and Journal. January 8, 1916.
  2. ^ "Lou Goodale Bigelow Retires From Local Photography Business". Coronado Compass. January 15, 1948.
  3. ^ "Mrs. Simpson photographed often at Coronado as smart-woman type". San Diego Union. October 28, 1936. p. 1.
  4. ^ "Coronadans recall the Duchess of Windsor". San Diego Union. March 20, 1977. p. 53.
  5. ^ McGrew, Clarence Alan (1922). City of San Diego and San Diego County: The Birthplace of California. Vol. 2. American Historical Society. pp. 337–338.
  6. ^ Hughes, Edan Milton (1986). Artists in California, 1786–1940. Hughes Publishing Company. p. 49. ISBN 9780961611200.
  7. ^ a b "Lou Goodale Bigelow: An early Twentieth-Century Female Photographer and Artist". Coronado Eagle and Journal. December 6, 2000.

Further reading

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Mohr, Joan M. (Summer 1988). "Seeker of Light and Shadow: Lou Adelaide Bigelow". Journal of San Diego History. 34 (3).

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Lou Goodale Bigelow photographs in the Denishawn Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections