Moodie, Geraldine (1853–1945)
Moodie, Geraldine (1853–1945)
Canadian photographer. Born Geraldine Fitzgibbons in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in 1853; died in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in 1945; married John Douglas Moodie (an officer in the RCMP), in 1877; children: five.
Born in 1853 in Ottawa, Ontario, Geraldine Moodie married Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer John Douglas Moodie in 1877. They moved to Calgary, Alberta, in 1886, and between 1887 and 1899 relocated frequently throughout the Canadian west. In the 1890s, Moodie began photographing the Native Americans and frontierspeople she encountered near Battleford, Saskatchewan. While her husband served in the tail end of the Boer War in South Africa, Moodie lived in Moosomin, Saskatchewan, and continued photographing, primarily portraits and ethnographic studies. Upon his return from South Africa, John Moodie was named a governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, with powers to claim islands north of Canada for the Dominion. In 1904, Moodie accompanied her husband on an expedition to the Arctic, where they remained until 1906. She traveled to England to photograph the coronation of King George V in 1911, and returned to the Arctic in 1915 for a year. Moodie moved with her husband to Duncan, British Columbia, in 1933, and ten years later settled in Calgary, where she died in 1945.
sources:
Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women Photographers. Paris & NY: Abbeville Publishers, 1994.
Grant Eldridge , freelance writer, Pontiac, Michigan