page_title: Jane Reece (photographer)
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Jane Reece (photographer) / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Spaces (Harry Losée). Photograph. 9 5/8" x 7 5/8"
context_page_description: Jane Reece was a highly acclaimed American pictorial photographer of the early 20th century. She lived most of her life in Dayton, Ohio and was active in the local, national and international photography scenes. During her 40-year career she exhibited in more than 100 photography salons and shows around the world, receiving many awards, prizes and honors. Reece is now recognized as one of Dayton's most prominent artists.
context_section_description: Reece was secretive about her age and many facts about her life. At times she appears to have embellished or exaggerated details of her history. Much of what is known to be true about her was assembled from her studio records, letters and interviews with friends and family members. She claimed to have been born in a log cabin near West Jefferson, Ohio; she never revealed, and may not have known, the exact date. Records indicate she was one of four children born to William L. Reece (1833-1879) and Mary Augsburger Ransomer (1837-1934). William Reece was a veteran of the American Civil War, during which he was a prisoner of war. Following his death, she and her siblings were raised in reduced circumstances in nearby Zanesville, Ohio. Her brother Lawson took up photography there and worked in the photographic studio of Muntz and Pack. Reece also worked there briefly and was listed as an "artist" or "artist-retoucher".
  Like many photographers during this period Reece began her artistic career as a painter, and she claimed she only began to photograph in earnest when a serious illness, thought to be spinal meningitis or tuberculosis, forced her to abandon painting in 1903. She said that she took up photography while recovering from the illness at the home of relatives in Southern Pines, North Carolina, at the insistence of the nurse who cared for her. However, in 1901-02 Reece was listed in the Dayton City Directory as having a "studio", and there are dozens of photographic portraits taken by her that appear to be from this period.
  In December 1903 Reece returned from her North Carolina recuperation, and moved to Dayton, where she opened a large photographic studio (she called it "The Rembrandt," hoping the artistic name would help attract clients who wanted studio portraits - her strategy worked well, for within the next year she recorded that she made more than 600 photographic silhouette portraits).
  Within a few years Reece's photographic style evolved from simple portraiture to a more artistic vision. For inspiration she subscribed to Alfred Stieglitz's important magazines Camera Notes and Camera Work. In 1907 she produced one of her best-known images, a self-portrait known as The Poinsettia Girl. In this work, Reece may have been influenced by another woman photographer, Eva Watson-Schütze, whose photograph The Rose was published in Camera Work in 1905.
  By 1909 she felt the need of advanced training in photography, and she moved briefly to New York to study with Clarence H. White at Columbia University. She stayed there for slightly less than four months, and later she claimed that White found her work too advanced for her to remain his student. Both White's and Reece's records and notes from that period are unclear about her actual attendance at Columbia, although she did produce a portrait of White in his studio. She is also known to have met Gertrude Käsebier during this visit, although the extent of their connection is unclear. Reece returned to Dayton in October of that year and opened a new portrait studio. Within a short while she had numerous clients, and for the next several years she made many commercial portraits of Dayton's prominent families.
  In 1911 Reece traveled to California, where she made a small series of photographs that both define her artistic style and her life at the time. The series, called The Soul in Bondage, interpreted the mythological story of Andromeda who was bound to rocks by the ocean and rescued by Perseus. Reece took the pictures on Catalina Island, and the model is thought to have been former Dayton resident Marie Peiza. Dominque Vasseur, former curator at the Dayton Art Institute, said this series "symbolizes a psychological and emotional struggle of great proportion which one must assume to be autobiographical." At the time, Reece was questioning her commitment to photography and to the career she had chosen; she was experiencing financial hardships, and her health was poor.
  She must have resolved whatever doubts she had before going to California, for after she returned to Dayton i
caption: Spaces (Harry Losée), by Jane Reece (1922)
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