Midwestern Fantasia

The last major mention of St. Louis studio photographer Fitz W. Guerin is a 1982 American Heritage article … which dismisses him as a turbid Victorian hack. The Library of Congress keeps hundreds of his photographs in its holdings, yet somehow can’t even spell his name correctly: It consistently refers to him as “Fritz.”

But there was a time …

In 1883, Guerin converted The January Mansion at 12th and Washington into the grandest of the six studios he’d own during his 27 years as a photographer in St. Louis. The Globe-Democrat reported it was the largest and most technically advanced photo studio in the country, able to deliver a print in two weeks (photomats in the 1970s had a hard time beating that). It had “a grand entrance in the Venetian style” and four floors, with departments for silvering, finishing, retouching and printing. (The skylight visible from 12th Street, the Globe reported, was not used for sittings, but for developing film, with “hundreds of pictures exposed to the sun at once.”) There were “richly carpeted waiting rooms” and several studios with pull-down scrims painted with meadows, cornfields, seashores or Grecian temples; one boasted “a large western window, where the most beautiful moonlight effects are obtained.”

Guerin was no bohemian. He had no qualms about producing images of smoking dogs (and smoking children!) for tobacco ads. Veiled Prophet mastermind Mayor Alonzo Slayback sat for a portrait; so did the Chouteaus and Wainwrights. He took home a medal from the Paris Exposition in 1878, served repeatedly as president of the National Photographic Society, won awards in photography exhibits across the country—and used it all as advertising leverage for his portrait business.

F.W. Guerin was a sellout. Or so you’d think—until you look at his photographs. The images on the following pages were not commissions. He spent hours of his own time constructing elaborate sets, posing models and getting the lighting just right. Even snarky American Heritage conceded that Guerin was a technical whiz; Photographic Magazine, in 1908, proclaimed his use of flash photography a decade ahead of its time: “The mere fact of Mr. Guerin being able to use any source of light made him a master,” it wrote. “He could suffuse, concentrate, accentuate and subordinate.” Guerin opened his first studio in 1877, when photography was barely 40 years old and used mainly for portraiture and “molls and rogues” galleries in police departments. He drew on and altered his negatives long before the Pictorialist movement, which fought to have photography recognized as fine art; Alfred Stieglitz, that school’s most famous adherent, staged his famous Photo-Successionist exhibit in 1902—the year before Guerin died.

Guerin did not die in St. Louis. He left for San Francisco on New Year’s Day, 1902, on account of Mrs. Guerin’s health. He sold his gallery (a smaller place now, at 12th and Olive) to Gerhard Sisters Studio. He lasted barely a year before dying of a heart attack. A few days before his death, he wired a friend to alert him about an upcoming visit to St. Louis. The wife was much better, he reported, and he couldn’t wait to return: “There is no place like St. Louis.”

The Queen of Crinoline

Title unknown, ca. 1902

One of Guerin’s stocks in trade was “bachelor art,” a quaint Victorian term for smut. While this photo could be interpreted as a turn-of-the-century version of Marilyn over the subway grate, it feels far more innocently joyful; Guerin’s goofy sense of humor often comes through in his work (one reason Very Serious Artists and Writers have dismissed him). Though some of Guerin’s models are conventionally beautiful, the ones who appear in his photographs repeatedly, like this lady, have striking features—round, startled eyes; prominent noses; pronounced chins like the visage on a coin. More than the wasp waist or the bee-stung mouth, Guerin favored presence.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Title unknown, ca. 1900

One common criticism of Guerin’s work is its unabashed sentimentality. This soft tableau of a young mother clipping her child’s angel wings, though contrived to play the heartstrings, transcends treacliness through sheer technical mastery. Look at the way the light falls on the folds in the woman’s linen dress, or the petulant-yet-petrified expression on the baby’s face. Though definitely guilty of more than one heart-tugger, Guerin’s sensibilites were more often mirthful: At the St. Louis Exposition of 1885, a Globe-Democrat writer was quite taken with his “comical display ... where a thieving youngster has climbed to the top of an orchard fence and finds the canine guardian waiting. With five fingers to his nose, the young rascal pokes fun at doggy below, who looks up with an injured air as if to say, ‘By rights I ought to have hold the seat of your trousers.’”

Soldier’s Joy

“Cuba Libre,” 1898

Published in America’s Yesterdays, p. 247, this photo, which looks opague and surreal to modern audiences, is actually a piece of propaganda for the Spanish-American War. In the late 19th century, newspapers praised this “splendid little war” for uniting the country against a common enemy and healing post–Civil War wounds. Born in Dublin, Guerin emigrated to New York as a child and became deeply patriotic; he joined the Union army at the age of 15 and fought for the  duration of the war. At 17, he volunteered for what was thought to be a suicide mission aboard “a cranky little Steamer, the Cheeseman,” which broke apart in the Mississippi. He and his comrades stood on what was left of the deck, shells and grapeshot flying around them, holding their position until backup arrived. They received Medals of Honor from Congress for their bravery.

Woodlands National Anthem

Title unknown, ca. 1900–02

It’s tableaus like this that earned Guerin the scorn of American Heritage, which criticized his “crowded sentimental scenes, usually built around the doings of children,” branding him “an overreacher” whose “set pieces, grand though they must have seemed at the time, never quite come off.” The Chicago Eye, however, praised his “very pretty devices of children in all sorts of grotesque attitudes. Some just emerging from a shell, others apparently attached to a parachute. We think Mr. Guerin ought to feel flattered if he heard the encomiums that were passed on his genius as an artist.” The joke behind the image—we have no clue to the significance of the smoking owl, much less the harmonica-playing dog—is lost to time. But that mystery,  the out-of-orbit humor and detailed woodland set are part of its allure; it almost seems like a gentle, Victorian precursor to the work of “Gothic Modernist” William Mortensen (another maligned Pictorialist) or Terry Gilliam’s

film sets.

Fight Song

Title unknown, published 1907

Unusual in that it’s shot in an actual room (rather than in front of a backdrop), this image displays Guerin’s skill at staging and lighting, as well as his ability to coax specific facial expressions from his models, especially children—a wonder considering what a clumsy process photography was in the late 19th century. Guerin was a frequent artistic presence at the St. Louis Grand Trades Pageants, though an 1883 Globe-Democrat article reveals he also applied for a much-coveted float permit in the grand parade that year. No word as to his acceptance, though we suspect his knack for creating otherworldly environments, populated by interesting-looking people, would have fit right into the processional. It was led by a Famous Department Store float depicting “the first parents, Adam and Eve ... flying from the avenging angel ... clad in a primitive garb of fig-leaves, closely followed by the alluring serpent.” Rainwater, Boogher & Co.’s float featured a “massive hat, which spans the earth. It is surrounded by other hats, in a design original and attractive.” Not only were the floats copyrighted, but their aim was to bring more customers through the door, something Guerin definitely appreciated.

Hello, Doily!

Title unknown, ca. 1902

Guerin was also a sucker for pure beauty. At the 1881 Photographic Convention in New York, a Globe-Democrat reporter bubbled that though Guerin’s  portrait of society belle Nellie Hazeltine was unable to “convey the exquisite tints of the violet eyes and Titian-red hair,” his “artistic reproduction of the faultless contour, and graceful pose of the neck” was sure to win him a medal. At another convention in Milwaukee in 1882, the Chicago Eye noted that Guerin’s photographs were respected across the country, as well as in Europe, where “they have ... been much praised by connoisseurs of the beautiful.” One image the crowd was particularly drawn to, it noted, was a portrait of a lady “who was seated on a polar bear among the icebergs. She appears very cool and perfectly composed. She was supposed to represent the Queen of the North, adrift on an iceberg.”