Produced by Paul Frederick
from a script by historian Jane Mackintosh.

Executive Producer
Marianne Potter.

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Seneca Ray Stoddard was a writer in the days of Emerson and Mark Twain.  He was also an illustrator, publisher, mapmaker, promoter and above all, photographer.

Stoddard captured stunning images of a rugged and changing wilderness in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. In the late 1800s he did more to promote, indeed create, the tourist trade in one of the last wilderness areas in the east, than anyone of his day. 

Producer Paul Frederick reflects, "As I sat at the computer doing some of the restoration work, I wondered how Stoddard would feel about the work we were doing to his images. He was known to hand draw on some of them, double print clouds into empty skies ... so in a way, we are continuing his creative legacy by embracing the latest digital technology to do the same."

Stoddard took over 10,000 photos in his lifetime, some of which were found at The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake and The Chapman Museum in Glens Falls. 

Other prints were provided by private collectors and they reveal images that have never before been available to the public.

The restoration work on the nearly 300 photos in the production was extensive, and each photo required an average of 30 minutes of digital clean-up.

Please join us as we explore and celebrate the life and times of Seneca Ray Stoddard, an American Original.

For more information about Seneca Ray Stoddard visit Chapman Museum.