When Josephine Ginn Banks died in 1958 at age 95, she probably hadn’t taken a serious photograph in decades. Still, Banks left behind a historically significant collection of more than 1,200 glass plate negatives and prints made in midcoast Maine around the turn of the 20th century.
However, she was an only child and had no offspring of her own. Thus, her pictures sat forgotten for 40 years before distant relatives rescued them from Banks’ boarded-up family home in Prospect in the late 1990s.
Banks’ relations then donated the pictures to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath where they remained in the archives until 2022, when some of them finally went on display in a major exhibition featuring three women photographers from Maine.
This week, another batch of Banks’ photos is going on display — this time, in the town where her shutter clicked and burned them to silvered glass plates a century ago.
“Images of Stonington’s Past: Early Twentieth Century Photography by Josephine Ginn Banks” opens Thursday with a gallery talk at the Deer Isle Granite Museum at 51 Main St. in Stonington. The exhibition, showing pictures of the bustling town when the granite trade was in full swing, will continue through the rest of the summer.
“Her scenes show everyday life and the essence of a town that’s really booming,” said Catherine Cyr, associate curator at the Maine Maritime Museum, who helped put the show together.
Though Banks remains somewhat mysterious, Cyr has been able to piece together the basic facts of the photographer’s life.
Banks was born to a well-off Prospect family in the shipbuilding trade in 1863. She remained at home, with her parents, until she eloped with a Stonington-based stone cutter named Charles E. Banks when she was 36 years old, in 1899.
“Because he was in the trades, it was probably seen as a step down,” Cyr said, explaining why it was considered an elopement.
It’s unclear exactly when Banks began making pictures but, by a decade into her marriage, she’d become a prolific local image-maker. She even listed her profession as “photographer” on the 1910 census, though Cyr could not locate any advertisements for her services in local newspapers.
“It was probably more of a hobby than a profession,” Cyr said, “But it was definitely her identity.”
Cyr said she was initially drawn to Banks’ portraits, rather than her landscapes. While technically excellent, Banks’ people pictures also convey emotions not always seen in the stiff, formal portraiture of those olden days.
“There’s something about the way she captured pictures of kids,” Cyr said. “She was able to get sassy portraits of toddlers. They feel so warm, so real.”
However, the Stonington show focuses instead on Banks’ view of the town which, at the time, boasted more than 30 local granite quarries employing more than 10,000 workers. Stonington granite was used in the Brooklyn Bridge, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
“She captured scenes of downtown, the quarries, granite sheds and the new school being built,” Cyr said.
Stonington Economic and Community Development Director Linda Nelson saw some of Banks’ pictures at the Maine Maritime Museum last year and worked with Cyr to pick out nine photos of Stonington for this year’s exhibit. Nelson is also on the board of the Deer Isle Granite Museum.
“It’s exciting because these photos have never been on display in Stonington before,” Nelson said. “I don’t want to give it away, but my absolute favorite is one of men in bowler hats paddling across the harbor in a barrel race.”
Unfortunately, Banks’ wedded life came to an abrupt end in 1921 when her husband died. A year later, both her parents were gone, as well. Not long after, Banks stopped making photographs and moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where she lived the rest of her long life.
Cyr doesn’t know why Banks moved there but suspects there may have been relatives in the area. Much remains unknown about Banks, but Cyr suspects the photographer, known as “Jo” to her friends, was someone she would have gotten along with.
“This is where I wish I had a time machine,” Cyr said. “She must have loved what she did. She had the ability to make people look comfortable in her photographs. I’m glad she’s finally getting her due.”
The Deer Isle Granite Museum is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., until October, and at other times for school trips and tours by special request.
