Blanche Hungerford Latimer photograph collection

Blanche Hungerford Latimer (ca. 1889-1944) was born in Baltimore, the daughter of Blanche A. Crowther Hungerford and Dr. Robert Arthur Hungerford. After attending Western High School, Blanche studied at the Maryland Institute for seven years, on her way to becoming a portrait photographer. She continued her studies in New York City, where she did postgraduate work in the School of Art and Photography at Columbia University and studied with pictorialist Clarence H. White at his School of Photography in 1914. White’s teachings advocated for the photographer to create the image with manipulation in the development process rather than a true-to-life replication.

She met with success in her career as a photographer. The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain exhibited two of her photographs in 1914. Her photograph “City Street” was published in the 1920 edition of Pictorial Photography in America, the publication of the Pictorial Photographers of America, which was founded in 1916 by White. “City Street” exemplified her murky, black and white style, which portrays her subjects in soft focus. Her other examples of her work were exhibited in the United States, and internationally in England, and Russia. Latimer had a studio on Hamilton Street in Baltimore.

She met her husband, Walter Roland Latimer, Sr. (ca. 1878-1924), in New York, from High Bridge, New Jersey, who was also a student of Clarence H. White. They married in 1918. They had two children, Blanche Adelaide and Walter Roland. The family lived in High Bridge, but after her husband’s death, the family moved to Maryland