The late C. Bennette Moore, who passed suddenly
December 8, 1939 at the height of his career, was born in
Sauk Center, Minnesota in 1879. As a very young man he enlisted
for the Spanish-American War and following his discharge from
the service, entered the employ of Emile Rivoire, famed French
photographer of New Orleans. In 1904, he purchased the studio,
re-named it and proceeded during the following thirty-five
years to establish a reputation for portraiture which made
his name known throughout the south.
From all parts of Louisiana and many surrounding
states the best people traveled to New Orleans to have their
portraits taken by C. Bennette Moore. After Moore's death,
the studio was kept open by his wife and daughters until the
late 1960s. When the studio closed Eugenie Stoll, a grandaughter,
left New Orleans and placed the collection into carefully
filed boxes. In 1999, Joseph Bergeron, owner of the Bergeron
Studio & Gallery and a former employee of the Moore Studio,
began displaying various photographic collections from the
turn of the century, including some of the work by C.Bennette
Moore. Recently Eugenie Stoll Regan returned to the New Orleans
area with the entire collection, which includes such things
as 8 x 10 glass plate negatives, 4 x 5" negatives, original
steel plate negatives and handpainted photographs. The unique
collection represents not only a high degree of artistic and
technical skill; it exemplifies the style and techniques of
an earlier period. In a few years, the plates, negatives and
even cameras of traditional photography will most likely begin
to gather dust as digitalization advances.
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