University of North Carolina at Asheville
D.H. Ramsey Library
Special Collections/University Archives

Photograph Register
for

Jody Barber Photographic Collection

P78.5.1

 
Junaluska Lake, the assembly grounds of the Southern Methodists [view of the lake and mountains]
 - A.F. Baker, photographer. Jody Barber Photographic Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, UNC Asheville 28804

Egerton "Jody" Barber (1923-2001) was a native of western North Carolina. Born and raised in Henderson County, he was the son of Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr. (1889-1980) and Percha McCullouch Barber (1891-1958). Jody Barber was an avid flyer and during WWII he served in the Army Air Corps and later as the first Commander of the Civil Air Patrol in Hendersonville and as a flight instructor at the regional airport. During his lifetime, Barber received numerous awards for public service, including the Governor's Award for volunteerism. He was active on many local boards, including the Downtown Hendersonville, Inc. Revitalization Board and the Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce. As a leader of many committees, including the Downtown Revitalization Committee, the Downtown Merchants Association, Hendersonville Lions Club, the Hendersonville Apple Festival Committee, and others, Barber played a significant role in shaping the direction of the city of Hendersonville.  He enjoyed music and a good time and in the '40s promoted street music and dances in Hendersonville. He played a tuba for both the Hendersonville Symphony and the Hendersonville Community Band. When Jody Barber died on January 25, 2001 at the age of 77, his obituary noted that "He will always be known as a historian, lecturer and revitalizer." 

Context :

The first member of the family to establish a photography studio in Hendersonville was Arthur Farrington (A.F.) Baker, an Englishman. He toured the Southeast with his brothers who were music teachers and piano salesmen and tuners. Unlike his brothers, A.F. Baker's real love was photography which he had studied in London under Alexander Bassano [Studio Bassano*]. He soon opened photographic studios in Chester and Rock Hill, S. C., and in 1884 a summer studio in Hendersonville. Before long, Baker made the North Carolina studio a year-round enterprise and operated it successfully after 1900 with the help of his relative, Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr.. The Barbers were English relatives of Bakers who had settled in western North Carolina early in the century. Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr. assumed control of Baker's studio in 1930 when A.F. Baker turned the business over to him. After some rough years during the Great Depression, the business gradually expanded and became a complete photo service store under the guidance of  Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr.

Photography at the turn of the century benefited from the advances of the previous decades and was largely a dry-plate process. In his oral interview Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr. indicates that that A.F. Baker's work represented the first efforts at dry-plate processing in Western North Carolina. He also elaborates on the use of various flash techniques that were used from the turn of the century to the early 1930's. The examples of photographic technique and notes in the collection indicate that Mr. Baker and Barber experimented with the latest photographic equipment. For example, many of the album page photographs are taken with a Premo Jr. #2A, a state of the art camera in 1914 when it was first manufactured by the Rochester Optical Company. The camera was not produced after 1922.

The Barbers have lost some of the family's photographs and glass plates by fire, but still possess a remarkable photographic collection of Hendersonville and its environs. The Center's collection consists of selected prints made from negatives of glass plates lent by the Barbers. They represent largely the work of A.F. Baker and Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr.

According to Armitage Farrington Barber, Sr., his relative A. F. Baker (or "Uncle Baker" as the family called him), studied at the Bassano Studios, founded by Alexander (Allessandro) Bassano (b. 1829), a Victorian photographer and amateur sculptor whose first established his studio at 122 Regent Street in London in the 1850's.  Following several re-locations, during which the studio kept the Bassano name, it was finally merged with another Victorian studio, that of Elliott & Fry in 1863.  Listed in The Photographic Studios of Europe compiled by H. Baden Pritchard, the Bassano Studio specialized in  portraiture and was reported to have been one of London's leading portraiture studios. A brief list of sitters attests to the leading reputation of the studio. Sitters included in the combined repertoire of Bassano and Elliot & Fry included: Queen Victoria, Paderewski, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Franz Lizt, Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, the last Zulu king, Cetshwayo, Lloyd George, Gladstone, and others. For an overview of the Bassano and Elliot & Fry Studios see :  Bevis Hillier. Victorian Studio Photographs: From the Collections of Studio Bassano and Elliott & Fry, London. Boston: David R. Godine, 1976. A.F. Baker's participation in the studio is not clear, nor is the length of time known that he may have had contact with the Bassano Studios. What is known is that while in the United States Baker made a respectable living as a portraitist though few of his portraits are represented in this surrogate collection.

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