2021 Essays

Ruth Harriet Louise

Mallory, Mary

A gifted and sensitive photographer, Ruth Harriet Louise worked for less than ten years in herchosen profession, running her own studio for three years in New Jersey before serving as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s head portrait photographer from 1925-1929. Today, photographers andscholars alike study her work, which skillfully captured the character as well as the beauty of herfamous clients, encapsulating her theory “that every portrait should just as a motion picture does,tell a story, reveal a character or interpret a mood” (Tildesley). Attention to Louise’s career,however, is a fairly recent phenomenon; at the time of her death in 1940, Louise and her workwere largely forgotten.