| Names: | Born: Lowell Norman Miller
|
| | Dates: | 1914, 1 June - 1999, 5 August | | Born: | US, KS, Wellington | | Died: | US, AR, Bentonville |
Preparing biographies Approved biography for Lowell N. Miller
(Courtesy of Christian Peterson) |
Lowell Norman Miller was born in Wellington, Kansas, on June 1, 1914. He earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1937 at Southwestern College (Winfield, Kansas) and later that year was hired by the Eastman Kodak Company, in Rochester, New York. Over the next few years, he took photography classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Miller was a prolific exhibitor and deeply involved in organizing the Rochester International Salon of Photography. His first known showing was in 1939 at the annual exhibition of the Kodak Camera Club. Subsequently, his pictorial prints were accepted at salons around the country, including those in New York and Houston. In the 1951-52 season, 205 of his photographs were seen in seventy salons, ranking him fifth in the world.
Miller showed regularly in the Rochester salon from 1949 to 1960, including color slides in the mid-1950s. He served in a number of administrative roles for the salon, beginning in 1950, when he was a member of the pictorial committee. He went on to be that committee’s chair, the exhibits director, vice-president, and president in 1955. The next year, he was the judge chairman, choosing Minor White and another individual for the salon’s pictorial print jury. In 1957, Miller became the salon’s first designated historian, a title he held until 1967, a time when monochrome print salons were essentially a thing of the past.
Miller became a fellow of the Photographic Society of America (FPSA) and an associate member of the Royal Photographic Society (ARPS) in London. His work was reproduced in the American Annual of Photography in 1951 and 1953, one of them being a still life with glass objects, apparently a favorite subject of his. The institute’s print Zebra by Refraction demonstrates Miller’s abilities at illuminating objects from the rear and using strong patterning. It is a prime example of the type of picture from around the middle of the century called "big, blue, and glossy," referring to the size of the print, its tone, and the print surface.
Miller retired from Eastman Kodak in mid-1979, after forty-two years of service. A few months later he moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, where he died on August 5, 1999.
Christian A. Peterson Pictorial Photography at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Christian A. Peterson: Privately printed, 2012)
This biography is courtesy and copyright of Christian Peterson and is included here with permission.
Date last updated: 1 June 2013.
SHARED BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION PROJECT
We welcome institutions and scholars willing to test the sharing of biographies for the benefit of the photo-history community. The biography above is a part of this trial.
If you find any errors please email us details so they can be corrected as soon as possible. |
|
| | Premium content for those who want to understand photography |
References are available for subscribers.There is so much more to explore when you subscribe.
Subscriptions
| | Portraits
If you have a portrait of this photographer or know of the whereabouts of one we would be most grateful.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
|
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint