Today we’re looking at an article published on June 11, 1924 in the Daily Inter Lake newspaper from Kalispell, Montana. (Kalispell is the county seat of Flathead County, Montana.) The article in question outlines a challenge issued by the Great Northern (Railway) officials; the Railway folks challenge the businessmen of Whitefish, Montana to a baseball game. Whitefish is the town in Flathead Country with the big train yard and depot, so I guess that’s why the Railway folks target their challenge at the people in Whitefish.
In any case, the reason we’re focussing on this “baseball challenge” article today is the fact that the challenge “rules” stipulate that the designated photographer for this game will be “Mrs. Keller”.
The “Mrs. Keller” in question is Blanche O. Keller, a photographer who ran a studio in Whitefish from 1919 until about 1928 or 1929. Here’s an example of one of her fancier newspaper ads:
Mrs. Keller had started her photography career in the early 1900s back in Helena, Montana as a partner in the Keller and Keller studio (when she teamed up with her husband, Emil D. Keller). She and Emil eventually split up both personally and professionally, with Mrs. Keller subsequently running the Helena studio on her own from about 1912 until 1919. Check out this ad for her brand in Helena 1914, once Emil is definitely out of the picture, as it were:
In 1919, Blanche leaves Helena, and moves her studio to Whitefish. While there, In addition to taking the occasional baseball photo, she has the usual photography studio business model, with a bit of an early 20th century twist. You see, in addition to Mrs. Keller taking the portraits of people at with her own camera in her studio, she also offers film processing for folks who take their own photos with their Kodak cameras. Not all photographers offer this kind of Kodak film processing service, but some do. I like how Mrs. Keller spotlights different kinds of services she offers in separate text-style ads, e.g. such as the ones below from the same edition of the newspaper:
The Whitefish Pilot, June 03, 1924
But mostly of Mrs. Keller’s ads, both in Helena and Whitefish, are for taking studio portraits, her primary business model. Once great example of that work is below.
Mrs. Keller took that beautiful portrait of Mrs. Morley, the state regent for the Montana chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in the mid 1910s, and the same photo is published in the newspaper as the official portrait of Mrs. Morley each year when she gets reelected to her post.
Ultimately Mrs. Keller closes up shop in Whitefish in the late 1920s and moves to Spokane, Washington. She lists herself as a photographer in the Spokane city directory, but she doesn’t sppear to have her own studio there, so she must have been working for someone else while in Spokane.
By 1940 Mrs. Blanche O. Keller has retired from photography. When she dies in 1945, her obituary mentions that she had a career as a photographer. Yay! You don’t see that often enough in the obituaries for these early women photographers.
Of course, you also don’t often see a woman photographer designated as an official baseball game photographer, but of course that’s just the news that appeared in the newspaper, 100 years ago today.
P.S. One final note: as I said, the notice for that “challenge” game appeared in the Kalispell paper on June 11, 1924 (100 years ago today). But readers from Whitefish reading the Kalispell paper article on June 11, 1924 might have been confused. You see, one of the Whitefish newspapers had already covered the outcome of the game the day before, on June 10, 1924.
The Whitefish Pilot, June 10, 1924
Sadly, neither the Whitefish Pilot nor the Daily Inter Lake newspaper saw fit to publish any of Mrs. Keller’s photos of the game. Hmph.
