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Photographers
South Bend has been photographed since before it was a city. A daguerreian was working on Michigan Street by 1858, three years before Albert J. McDonald bought a studio here in 1861 and founded a house that was still taking portraits when its last owners announced their retirement in September 2026 — a run of one hundred sixty-five years that the city's congressman entered in the Congressional Record as the longest of any photography studio in Indiana. Between those poles stands the whole trade: the portrait galleries of the directory years, a Polish west-side photographer working out of a theatre building, a camera club whose member's devotional picture had hung in seven national and international salons by 1949, Lewis Hine photographing boys at the Singer works, the Tribune's staff photographers and the million-image archive their negatives became, a university archive of another million images across the city line in the Notre Dame community, and a camera store on Lincoln Way West that has sold the tools since 1939.
The first pictures: a daguerreian on Michigan Street, 1858–1861
1858–1861 — the daguerreian and ambrotype era
The first name: The earliest photographer the record reached working in South Bend is C. A. Stover, listed in Craig's Daguerreian Registry as a daguerreian and ambrotypist here from 1858 to 1861. In 1858 and 1859 his rooms stood…
McDonald Studio: the house of 1861, and its 165 years
1861–2026 — Albert J. McDonald, his son, and the Patnaudes
The founder: Albert J. McDonald was born in Rochester, New York, in 1841, came to South Bend at nineteen, and in 1861 purchased the photograph studio that carries his name still. The county biography of 1893 records that he "has…
Paul Beckwith, and the man visible only in his successor's advertisement
1873–1875 — 107 and 109 Michigan Street
A two-link chain: The succession at 107 and 109 Michigan Street is preserved entire in two advertisements. In 1873 Paul Beckwith's own directory notice at that address styles him "successor to A. VanSickle." In 1875 Albert…
Bulla Bros.: the brothers on Michigan Street
1873–1878 — William D. and Thomas H. Bulla, 88 Michigan Street
The firm: Bulla Bros. — William D. Bulla and Thomas H. Bulla — worked at 88 Michigan Street from 1873 to 1877, one of the three photographic houses Turner's 1875 directory carries for the city, and a carte de visite bearing the…
William Gibson: a photographer of 1860, on both sides of the city line
1860–1867 — Mishawaka rooms, then a South Bend gallery
The career: William Gibson learned photography in 1860 — so his sketch in Chapman's 1880 county history says, at pages 915–916; the sketch does not name the town where he learned, a gap the Indiana Photographers Project itself…
Emery E. Pool: fourteen years of directory addresses
1875–1889 — Main Street, then Washington Street; afterward La Porte
The run: Emery E. Pool is the directory record's steadiest tenant of the 1870s and 1880s. Turner's 1875 directory lists him at the corner of Main and Market — one of the three photographic listings on its page 174 — and the…
August Luckhaus: cabinet cards, and a trade that traveled
1880s–1889 — 104 and 101 South Michigan Street
The cabinet-card man: August Luckhaus belongs to the cabinet-card era, the format that succeeded the carte de visite — a larger print on a card mount, the studio's name and address printed on the back as advertising. His South…
Joseph K. Sosnowski: the west side's photographer
1899–1921 — Mason & Sosnowski, the Star Photo Co., and the Orpheum Studio
The Polish west side's camera: Joseph K. Sosnowski — the name also prints Sosnoski in the record — is the photographer of the Polish west side, the city's great immigrant quarter, at the turn of the century. The directory course…
The trade at sampled years: what the directories actually show
1867, 1875, and the 1863–1921 list — counts stated, never extended
The measure: This section counts the portrait trade only where a directory page was read, and prints the counts at that size. Holland's South Bend directory of 1867 carries two names under its classified heading "Photograph…
The camera club and the pictorialist: Paul B. Miller's seven salons
1949 — the South Bend Camera Club in the record
The amateur standing: Alongside the trade stood the amateurs, and South Bend's are documented at the size of a single rich caption. In the final issue of the 1948–49 year, the Notre Dame Scholastic 's "Picture of the Week"…
Lewis Hine at the Singer works: the child-labor camera in South Bend
1908 or 1914 — the caption card and its neighbors disagree
The most famous camera ever pointed at this city: Lewis Wickes Hine, the National Child Labor Committee's investigator-photographer, worked in South Bend at the Singer Manufacturing Company — the sewing-machine cabinet works that…
The magazine visitors: Hansel Mieth's census and George Strock's Bendix women
1939–1941 — LIFE looks at South Bend
Two assignments: The national picture magazines sent their own photographers, and two of the visits survive in the LIFE record. In August 1939 Hansel Mieth — the German-born photographer who, with Otto Hagel, had made the…
The federal test: the Farm Security Administration did not photograph this city
1935–1943 — a searched negative, printed whole
The test and its answer: The Farm Security Administration's photographic unit — Roy Stryker's shop, with Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and their colleagues — made the canonical picture of Depression America, and…
The Tribune's photographers: the staff tradition the record gives it
1937–2026 — the daily paper's cameras
The named staff: For most of the twentieth century the city's daily visual record was made by the South Bend Tribune 's staff photographers, and the archive they left — the next entry — is the largest single body of South Bend…
The Tribune Photographs Collection: the city's picture archive
1937–1999 — twenty-one cabinets, ninety-four boxes
The archive: The Tribune 's negatives are the city's picture archive, and their home telling is in the Libraries file, where the collection's keeper stands; what belongs here is the photographers' side of it — the scale of what…
Mike Bennett: forty years at the stadium rail
1974–2019 — Professional Photographic Services and Notre Dame athletics
The freelancer who became the institution: Mike Bennett (c. 1950 – 5 August 2019) was raised in South Bend and came to Notre Dame photography through the stadium gate: he began as a stadium usher in 1966, took a tool-and-die…
From the air: the 1951 and 1957 series, and the makers no record names
1951–1957 — the county's early aerial photography
Anonymous by survival: The aerial photograph is the one branch of this trade whose South Bend practitioners the record does not name at all. The St. Joseph County Public Library's Local & Family History department keeps the…
The companies' cameras: Studebaker's archive and the unnamed staff photographer
1918–1991 — the industrial image record
Seventy tons, no names: The great companies photographed themselves constantly — product lines, plants, advertising, engineering — and Studebaker's photographic output survives inside the archive the company gave the City of…
Gene's Camera: the supply trade's own 87 years
1939–2026 — Picture Equipment Company to Gene's Camera
The store that armed the amateurs: Every camera club and working photographer in this section needed a counter to buy film, paper and chemicals at, and for most of the period it was one store. Gene's Camera, at 513 Lincoln Way…
The modern documentary line: ruins, a river path, and a neighborhood's portraits
c. 2003–2016 — Turok, Westhues, Dickey, and the Photoformers
The city as subject now: The present era's documentary record of South Bend was made by photographers who came to the city's remains and its neighborhoods as their subject. Antonio Turok, the Mexican photographer born in 1955…
At the boundary: the Sisters of the Holy Cross and their own archive
1843–present — the Congregational Archives at Saint Mary's
The sisters' cameras: Saint Mary's College stands with Notre Dame in the unincorporated community across the city line, and it is printed here at the same boundary size. The Congregational Archives and Records of the Sisters of…