Margaret Watkins published three short essays on photography and left a large archive of documents, now at the McMaster University Library in Hamilton, Ontario. She had a major solo show in New York in 1923 and exhibited in over twenty-six group shows in her lifetime, in the U.S., Canada, and internationally. Due to the efforts of her neighbour Joseph Mulholland, she has been included in photographic history since the 1990s. A major research study of her life and work is Mary O’Connor and Katherine Tweedie’s Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins (2007). Two major exhibitions of her work (Domestic Symphonies, National Gallery of Canada, 2012; and Black Light, diChroma Photography, 2021) have brought her work to a wider public.
Key Exhibitions (including Posthumous Exhibitions)
In Watkins’s Lifetime
a) Solo Exhibitions
1923
Art Center, New York City
1924
Jackson St. Branch Library of the New York Circulating Library, New York City
Canadian Business and Professional Women’s Club of New York
b) Group Exhibitions
1917
An Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Clarence H. White School of Photography, New York City
1920
Copenhagen Photographic Amateur Club Exhibition (American section – collected under the auspices of the Pictorial Photographers of America), Copenhagen
1921
Clarence H. White School of Photography alumnae exhibition (nine women photographers), Wellesley College, Wellesley, and Smith College, Northampton. Also exhibited at Columbia Teachers College, Manhattan; at Unitarian Church, Flushing; and as part of the 1920 Copenhagen exhibition.
Exhibition of the Pictorial Photographers of America, Art Center, New York City (first prize: Still Life – Circles)
First Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Pictorial Photographers Society of San Francisco
1922
First International Kohakai Salon of Photography, Kobe, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto
Second Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Photographic Society of San Francisco
The Emporium Second Annual Photographic Exhibition, San Francisco (second prize: The Kitchen Sink)
1923
International Salon of the Pictorial Photographers of America, Art Center, New York City
Second International Kohakai Salon of Photography, Kobe, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto
Third Annual International Exhibition, The Emporium, San Francisco (second prize: At the Baby Clinic)
Third International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, New Westminster, B.C. (honourable mention: Domestic Symphony)
Second Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Pictorial Photographers Society of San Francisco and Oakland Art Association, San Francisco
Frederick & Nelson Fourth Annual Salon of Pictorial Photography, Seattle (first prize: The Princess)
International Exhibition of the London Salon of Photography Galleries of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, London, England
1924
Kodak Park Camera Club, Rochester, N.Y.
Third International Kohakai Salon of Photography, Kobe
International Foto-Tentoonstelling, Bandoeng, Java
Salons of America Exhibition: Water Colors, Etchings, Drawings, etc., Anderson Galleries, New York City
Frederick & Nelson Fifth Annual Salon of Pictorial Photography, Seattle (fifth prize: At the Baby Clinic)
Third Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Pictorial Photographic Society of San Francisco and San Francisco Museum of Art, Galleries of California School of Fine Arts
1925
Exhibition of Photographs by the Students & Alumni of the Clarence H. White School of Photography, Art Center, New York City
Second International Salon of Pictorial Photography, Pictorial Photographers of America, Art Center, New York City
San Francisco International Salon of Photography
1928
London Salon of Photography, Galleries of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, London, England
1936
Glasgow and West of Scotland Photographic Association Annual Exhibition, Glasgow (first prize, class 1: The Kitchen Sink; Sir Hugh Reid Trophy, class 2: The Princess; second prize, class 2: Model Resting)
1937
Glasgow and West of Scotland Photographic Association Annual Exhibition, Glasgow
Third Annual Exhibition, Scottish Photographic Competition under the auspices of Scottish Photographic Federation, Daily Record Newspaper House, Glasgow (highly commended: A Study – Ellipse & Triangle, and Angna Enters – Dancer)
Posthumous Exhibitions
a) Solo Exhibitions
1981
June 20–July 11. Margaret Watkins: Photographs from the ’20s, Third Eye Centre, Glasgow
1986
Light Gallery, New York City
1996
Margaret Watkins: 1884–1960: Photographs, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow
Margaret Watkins, Robert Mann Gallery, New York City
2012
Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphonies, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton (2013); Museum London (2014)
2013
Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphony, Robert Mann Gallery, New York City
2021-22
Margaret Watkins: Black Light, Kutxa Kultur Artegunea, San Sebastian, Spain; CentroCentro, Madrid; Mai Mano House, Budapest; Art Gallery of Hamilton; Centro Cultural de Cascais, Portugal
b) Selected Group Exhibitions
1996
Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography, Detroit Institute of Arts
Women in Photography, New York Public Library
2018
Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925, Princeton Art Museum
2021-22
The New Woman Behind the Camera, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg, Ontario
2022
Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Watkins has had numerous solo exhibitions at The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow, but these are too numerous to list.
Selected Published Writings by the Artist
“Charity” and “Sympathy.” Methodist Magazine and Review: Devoted to Religion, Literature, and Social Progress 57 (1903): 457, 320.
“Concerning the Pervasive Influence of Art.” Boston Sunday Globe, June 6, 1915.
“The House I Love.” Canadian Magazine 47, no. 3 (1916): 199.
“Advertising and Photography.” Pictorial Photography in America 4 (1926).
“Editorial Comment.” Pictorial Photography in America 4 (1926).
“How My Art Enriches Life.” Ground-Glass: Bulletin of the Newark Camera Club 8 (September 1926): 5.
Selected Writings on the Artist’s Work
Mulholland, Joseph, writings from 1972 to 2021. Multiple articles on the life and work of Margaret Watkins, including:
Mulholland, Joseph. “Chance Request Leads to Discovery and Exhibit at Light Gallery.” Photograph Collector, May 15, 1984.
———“Glasgow Notes” and “Margaret Watkins in Russia.” Glasgow Review, Summer 1997, 18, 23–28.
———“A Life in Photographs.” In Margaret Watkins, 1884–1969: Photographs, edited by Martha McCulloch. Glasgow: Street Level Gallery and Workshop, 1994.
———“Photographs by Margaret Watkins.” Glasgow Review, Summer 1972, 23.
———“Portrait of an Artist.” Scottish Field, October 1981, 73–78.
———“A Reminiscence.” In Margaret Watkins: Photographs 1917–1930. Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1981.
———“A Sad Strange Gleam of Vision.” Photograph Collector, Spring 1982.
———“Preface.” In Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins, by Mary O’Connor and Katherine Tweedie, xvii–xx. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007.
———“Margaret Watkins.” In Margaret Watkins: Domestic Symphonies, by Lori Pauli, 8–11. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2012.
———“Miss Watkins.” In Margaret Watkins: Black Light, edited by Anne Morin, 17–18. Madrid: diChroma Photography, 2021.
Mulholland, Joseph, and George Oliver. Margaret Watkins: Photographs 1917–1930. Glasgow: Third Eye Centre, 1981.
Publications from The Hidden Lane Gallery, Glasgow: Margaret Watkins – Forgotten Woman (2009/2015), Glasgow in the 1930s (2010/2015), Glasgow in the 1930s II (2014), Paris 1933 (2011), Leningrad and Moscow 1933 – I (2012), Art and Advertising (2013), and London in the 1930s (2015).
“A Fresh Angle: The Revolutionary Gaze of Margaret Watkins—in Pictures.” Guardian, August 12, 2021.
“Photography Comes into the Kitchen: A Group of Photographs by Margaret Watkins Showing Modernist, or Cubist, Patterns in Composition.” Vanity Fair, October 1921, 60.
Borcoman, James. Magicians of Light. Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1993.
Fulton, Marianne, ed. Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography. New York: Rizzoli, 1996. Includes Bonnie Yochelson, “Clarence H. White, Peaceful Warrior”; and Kathleen A. Erwin, “‘Photography of the Better Type’: The Teaching of Clarence H. White” and “Biographies.”
Margaret Watkins: 1884–1960: Photographs. Glasgow, Street Level Gallery, 1996. Includes H. Belloff, “A Lost Feminity”; J. Mulholland, “A Life in Photographs”; and L. Pauli, “‘A Few Hellers’: Women at the Clarence H. White School of Photography.”
Morin, Anne, ed. Black Light. Madrid: diChroma Photography, 2021. Including Anne Morin, “Black Light”; Mary O’Connor, “Pivotal Moments in the Photography of Margaret Watkins: 1928, 1923”; and Tintin Törncrantz, “Margaret Watkins at Last Revealed.”
O’Connor, Mary, and Katherine Tweedie. Seduced by Modernity: The Photography of Margaret Watkins. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007.
O’Connor, Mary. “From Amateur to Professional: The Advertising Photography of Margaret Watkins, 1924–1928.” In Rethinking Professionalism: Essays on Women and Art in Canada, edited by Kristina Huneault and Janice Anderson. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012.
———. “La Clarence H. White School of Photography: construire un modernisme ‘à part’ Stieglitz.” In Carrefour Alfred Stieglitz, edited by Jay Bochner and Jean-Pierre Montier. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012.
———. “Margaret Watkins’s Self-Portraits.” In The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by Canadian Historical Women Artists, edited by Alicia Boutilier and Tobi Bruce. Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2015.
———. “Pivotal Moments in the Photography of Margaret Watkins: 1928, 1923.” In Black Light, edited by Anne Morin. Madrid: diChroma Photography, 2021.
———. “The Objects of Modernism: Everyday Life in Women’s Magazines, Gertrude Stein and Margaret Watkins.” In American Modernism across the Arts, edited by Jay Bochner and Justin Edwards. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.
Parsons, Sarah. “Margaret Watkins.” In Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, edited by Sarah Milroy, 197–98. Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2021.
Pauli, Lori. “Margaret Watkins: Making It Home.” Studies in Photography 5 (2000–01): 16–23.
———. “‘A Few Hellers’: Women at the Clarence H. White School of Photography.” In Margaret Watkins: 1884–1960: Photographs. Glasgow: Street Level Gallery, 1996.
———. “Margaret Watkins: A Life in Three Parts.” In Domestic Symphonies. Ottawa: NGC, 2012.
Archival Sources
Clarence H. White and the Clarence H. White School of Photography Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton
Joseph Mulholland, Glasgow, Scotland. Watkins’s photographs, negatives, and contact prints
Glasgow City Archives. Anderson Family Papers. Mitchell Library, Glasgow
Lanier Camp (Eliot, Maine) papers, Maine Historical Society, Portland
Laura Gilpin Archive, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Library of Congress, Washington:
Clarence H. White Collection, Prints and Photographs Division
Warren and Margot Coville Collection, Prints and Photographs Division
Henry Putnum Correspondence, Collections of the Manuscript Division
Margaret Watkins Fonds, William Ready Division of the Archives and Research Collections, Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
Key Interview with the Artist
Christian Science Monitor, quoted in “Former Hamilton Girl in Greenwich Village,” Hamilton Spectator, April 26, 1929.
Audio and Video about the Artist
Peter Le Neve Foster, Seeing the USSR, 1933, fifteen-minute film of the Royal Photographic Society group’s (including Watkins) visit to Leningrad and Moscow
Barnaby Robson, Watkins, in Malcolm Lindsay, After the Snow, 2015, musical composition, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxAHSBJgKbk
Anne Morin, Margaret Watkins: Black Light, Kutxa Kultur Artegunea, San Sebastian (Spanish), 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDkhG6dKVKk
Anne Morin and Joseph Mulholland, Close up: Margaret Watkins, Street Level Photoworks, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APilRHcXBJQ
Mary O’Connor and Katherine Tweedie, Archive Traces: Margaret Watkins Photographer, 2022, fourteen-minute film
Margaret Watkins: Not an Everyday Life – A Conversation with Mary O’Connor, Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILk9e4u5Ybo
Further Readings
Davidov, Judith Fryer. Women’s Camera Work: Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Dow, Arthur Wesley. Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. 1920. Reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
Lundgren, Adrienne. “Cyanotype, Platinum and Palladium Printing: The Siderotype Artistry of Clarence H. White.” In Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895–1925, edited by Anne McCauley, 342–52. New Haven and London: Princeton University Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2017.
McCauley, Anne, ed. Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895–1925. New Haven and London: Princeton University Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2017.
Nelson, Andrea. The New Woman Behind the Camera. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2020.
Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. 1994. 3rd ed., Paris: Abbeville Press, 2010.