Nichols Family Papers

Collection

Identifier: RG 30-372

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The papers of the Nichols Family primarily document the career of Ruth Alexander Nichols as a photographer and businesswoman and range from letters to and from diverse family members to photographs and negatives. These materials provide an example of a successful commercial photographer who was almost entirely self-taught. Ruth Alexander Nichols began her career as a photographer out of necessity, finding herself widowed in the first half of the twentieth century, an age when single motherhood and the pursuit of an independent career were unusual and difficult roles for women.

Nichols’s records of sale are one way of grasping the popular success she was eventually able to accrue, as they display the volume and variety of buyers for her photographs. As well as highlighting Ruth Alexander Nichols’s abilities and achievements, and offering insight into the mechanics of her business, the collection sheds light on the work of another successful semi-professional woman: May Ellis Nichols, her mother-in-law. May Ellis Nichols was a fairly prolific writer whose articles on travel and experiences abroad were published in a number of periodicals, such as The Sketch Book Magazine, during the late nineteenth century into the early 1900s. She also collaborated with her daughter-in-law on articles in which the photography was done by Ruth A. Nichols and set to text written by May Ellis Nichols.

Ruth Alexander Nichols wrote and illustrated some of her own books as well, including Babies and Betty and Dolly, and these were designed primarily as children’s books. Her early photographs of animals, such as those in “Into the Land of the Chipmunk” published in National Geographic, reflected the abiding patience and skill that enabled her to work so closely with babies and children. Her approach to photographing these subjects, using ordinary children in many unposed and naturally-lighted scenes, was entirely unique. Another unique aspect of her work was her use of “Carbro” printing, a painstaking color printing process which took over twenty-four hours to complete, but which resulted in extremely detailed, lifelike prints. Such a process was used to produce cover shots for McCall’s and other popular magazines, helping to propel Ruth Alexander Nichols’s career into a realm of extreme popularity.

In addition to professional materials of these two women, such as the rare and valuable “Carbro” prints and copies of many magazines in which her photographs appeared, the collection includes a lengthy personal correspondence series that spans two generations and was generated by members of both the Nichols and Alexander families, as well as Brewster Sperry Beach, Nichols’s second husband. The collection also contains additional personal materials such as scrapbooks, daybooks, and journals, including one written by Herman Nichols during his time as a combatant in World War I. His 1918 wartime journal documents his experiences beginning with base training in the United States, through his voyage to England and duties while in service there and ultimate dischargement from the services. In it, Nichols discusses news about the Allies’ successes and defeats as well as detailing his impressions of the towns and camps in which he stayed and the activities he shared with other soldiers.

Other journals include the travel and college-day diaries of Herman Nichols and the travel diaries of May Ellis Nichols. The latter provide detail regarding the daily experiences and events of the countries she visited, including France. Journals like the “Excelsior” and “Line A Day” diaries kept by May Ellis Nichols between 1893 and 1954, were designed to accommodate brief entries and contain commentary on pedestrian activities, rather than longer descriptions.

Dates

Creation: 1884-1962, undated
Other: Majority of material found in 1911-1934
Other: Date acquired: 2004 June 15

Creator

Nichols, Ruth Alexander (Person)
Nichols Family (Family)
Nichols, Herman (Nichols, Herman Ellis) (Person)
Nichols, May Ellis (Person)
Nichols, Louis (Person)
Beach, Brewster Sperry (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Unrestricted.

Biographical or Historical Information

Born in Bethany, Nebraska on 30 September 1893, Ruth Alexander Nichols navigated her studies at Oberlin College, a prolonged engagement, and a first marriage ending prematurely with her husband’s death to craft an eminently successful career as a photographer. Her career was marked not only by her success but by innovations that led magazine publishers to demand her work – in particular, her use of “Cabro” prints and ordinary children and babies set in natural poses were revolutionary. Her work was almost entirely for commercial use, beginning with her first job writing and photographing college publicity brochures in 1919 and resulting in her establishment of a company dedicated to taking photographs of babies, parents, and children.

The daughter of Benjamin Alexander and Ida May Smith, Ruth Alexander Nichols displayed easily interest in writing and photography. Her first photographic efforts focused on the natural world, and she developed a skill for catching small wild animals on film without disturbing them. This skill foretold the career she was to build later in life, in which her patience and attention to natural lighting and details was translated onto new subjects – babies. Ruth Alexander Nichols ultimately became known as “the baby photographer,” who would seek out models by marching up to new mothers in supermarket aisles.

Her career was not only the product of talent and interest, though, but in fact arose from necessity. After moving to Oberlin in 1911 and attending college there, matriculating in 1915, Ruth Alexander Nichols found herself alone with a fiancé away at war. Herman Nichols, a fellow graduate of Oberlin, serves as a member of the Armed Services in World War I. While he was away, Ruth Nichols attempted to pursue domestic life, teaching in a public school in Hiawatha, Kansas from 1916-17.This soon grew painfully boring for her, though, and she sought other employment. She found a far more interesting pursuit in a job with a publicity agency, which employed her to photograph and write brochures for college campuses. This gave her the opportunity to travel as well as use her technical skills.

In 1920, she and Herman Nichols were at last married, and they settled in Brooklyn, NY to raise a family. Herman Nichols began work as an attorney, and Ruth gave birth to her first daughter, Jane Ellis Nichols, in 1922. Sadly, the marriage and family were not to last long: Herman Nichols died in 1924, just prior to the birth of their second daughter, Anne Townsend Nichols. Left alone, Ruth Alexander Nichols was forced to rely upon her skills and experience to support her family and earn an income – not an ordinary task for a woman of the 1920s. When she offered to sell candid, naturally-posed and lit photographs of her own daughters to one publishing house, it led to increasing interest among other magazine publishers. By 1925, more and more publishers, including those at Women’s Home Companion and Good Housekeeping, were buying and requesting photographs. As her business and reputation as a photographer for magazines grew, she added to her earnings by taking personal portraits as well.

Her career took another large step nearly five years later, when advertising companies began to employ her. This led to accounts with Johnson and Johnson and Clapps Baby Food, among others. A characteristic style had emerged in her photographs that made them instantly recognizable: she chose to photograph babies and children in the midst of their activities, necessitating the use of ordinary children as models, rather than those who had already been trained to smile at the camera. She used a great deal of ambient lighting and focused directly on the subject’s face, making for an attention-grabbing look. Finally, she worked with the technique of “Cabro” printing, a color-printing technique that required a long process of development and resulted in incredibly detailed prints. This technique was too expensive and time-consuming to be used frequently, and was eventually abandoned by the era’s photographers. It did, however, produce very high quality photographs unlike any other printing process.

Her daughters were a valuable resource to Nichols; without her candid portraits of them in infancy, she might never have broken into professional photography. Their role in her career did not end there, though. Jane Ellis and Anne Townsend were both pressed into service as photographic assistants once they had grown too old to be used as subjects. Eventually, both daughters attended Oberlin College – Jane from 1939-41, and Anne a graduate in the class of 1947. By 1933, before they left home, Ruth Alexander Nichols had set up her own indoor studio in Westfield, New Jersey and employed two other photographers, Elizabeth and Oscar Bro, to help her with her business. With this expanded business, Nichols continues to receive commissions for photographs, published illustrated children’s books, and produced photographs for use in both magazine features and advertising campaigns.

In 1935, Nichols married again. Her husband’s name was Brewster Sperry Beach, and the two has maintained correspondence during his military service in World War II prior to their marriage. Brewster Beach worked in journalism and public relations, and Nichols herself continued to work prolifically throughout the 1950s. Nichols retired from professional photography around 1960, and died in Summit, New Jersey on 22 April 1970.