Nellie Coutant in public archives

Photo-recreation from copy-negative held by Sadakichi Hartmann collection at University of California Riverside, 2008

I have been researching Nellie Coutant for a long time, and my own tendency to self-isolate has meant I usually rely on digital resources. And because of the times when Nellie was most active, her creative and social activities appear to have be documented more prominently in popular publications, like photography magazines, women's magazines, and newspapers. When I started researching her 10+ years ago, these types of sources just weren't searchable, scanned, or online, and resource guides don't prioritize popular media. True, these were mistake-ridden documents, not "peer reviewed", written with ulterior political motives; and tainted with social judgements. But as I have recently found out, this is where Nellie has been hiding.

Nellie Coutant is referenced in those institution-anointed resources, but only as a wisp. In 2008, the best yet most frustrating wisp is found in a quote by Sadakichi Hartmann, in his essay called "The Salon Club and the First American Photographic Salon at New York", reproduced in a collection called The Valiant Knights of Daguerre by the University of California Press in 1978. In December of 2008, I visited the Sadakichi Hartmann papers at the University of California, Riverside, where I got to see a brand-new-to-me image by Nellie, "The Goose Picker," which had run with Hartmann's essay in the original in American Amateur Photographer, (July 1904), p. 296-305. His wisp about Nellie:

The works of Nellie Coutant--the "little wooden shoe" pictorialist--of Zaida Ben-Yúsuf, whom I have always considered our leading portraitist on semi-artistic lines... are too well know to be specially discussed. (Hartmann, 1978, p. 123)

Too well known, yet now totally invisible. By strange coincidence, an exhibition of Zaida Ben-Yúsuf's work with a monograph catalogue had just been published by the Smithsonian Institute. Zaida worked as a portrait photographer in New York City, and had many famous and important clients. She also competed in national competitions and shows, some of the same as Nellie. Yet, as Frank Goodyear pointed out in 2008, "the memory of her achievement as a photographer has largely vanished." (Source and Images) Zaida was a full-time photographer in a large city, with a large body of work that included famous clients. This meant more of her images made their way into archives, including the majority of her collection landing in the Smithsonian. Yet she was still forgotten for 70 years.

What hope did I have to find anything about Nellie?

Recently, many 19th century newspapers have been digitized and made available for online searches, and shifting interests in sociological study of sources and creative works previously dismissed as unimportant have been added in special digital archives. It's great.

After the original documents are scanned or photographed, a use text-recognition software transcribes the documents into a searchable form. So cool! But because no one wants to proof read thousands of newspapers by hand, these auto-translations can have a lot of mistakes. I vary my searches by city, then read about every "Nellie" they mention. It's slow and tedious, but I have managed to find 40 or so more unknown images of her work. Some are illegible, as many are digital scans of microfilm, complete with scratches and film-lifts. But even having a shadow of new works has me very excited about Nellie. What else might I be able to find in 10 more years?