C. Alice Baker This photograph is from Emma Coleman, New England
Captives Carried to Canada, 1925.
Coleman carried on Baker's work of researching the fates
of New England captives of the French and Indian Wars. In Sarah
Orne Jewett, Paula Blanchard writes that Emma Lewis Coleman "was a
photographer and Baker a historian; the three summered at York [ME] together.
In 1883-86 Jewett and the others collaborated in staging a series of photographs
in the [François] Millet style: local models, or sometimes Miss
Baker, would dress up in period costume and Coleman would photograph them
at everyday rural tasks. Reconstructing historic conditions as accurately
as possible, the group also followed Millet in creating images intended
to express the beauty and dignity of rural life. The results were
obviously staged and entirely lacked the heroic aura of Millet's peasants,
but Jewett was pleased with them. A few years later she persuaded
Houghton Mifflin to use the photographs as illustrations in an 1893 edition
of Deephaven" (225-6).
