Milton Historical Society presents Sutermeister photo exhibit at Eustis Estate

Event opens March 15th and runs through September 29th

The Milton Historical Society presents Written in Light: Photographs from the Milton Historical Society featuring photographs by Margaret Sutermeister (1875-1950). The event opens March 15th and runs through September 29th at Historic New England’s Eustis Estate located at 1424 Canton Ave., Milton, MA 02186. The exhibit is free with admission to the Eustis Estate. Admission is free for Milton residents.

After leaving school in 1894, Sutermeister took up photography using a glass plate camera to document everyday life in Milton and the surrounding area. During the next 15 years, she shot a wide range of subjects: romantic landscapes, street scenes, scientific experiments, people at work and portraits both formal and candid.

“This was an era when women did little outside the home and this was a means of self-expression not usually available to women,” said Milton Historical Society president Stephen O’Donnell.

Margaret Sutermeister was born in 1875 in Milton, MA, to Emmanuel Sutermeister and Harriet Georgianna Davenport. Her father, who was of Swiss descent, ran a commercial plant nursery and vegetable garden and was also a fireman. Her brother was chemist Edwin Sutermeister. She lived for most of her life in the Capen-Davenport-Sutermeister House on Canton Avenue, which had been built in 1781 and was located on the same property as the family nursery. Her home is still standing today at 1631 Canton Avenue.

When her father died in 1909, she took over managing the family’s Davenport Nursery and gave up photography.

She died in 1951, and a year later the new owners of her house discovered her 1800 glass-plate negatives in a barn. They donated this archive of turn-of-the-century Massachusetts life to the Milton Historical Society. It was published in the early 1990s by art historian Judith Bookbinder and has formed the basis of several exhibitions since.

“Historic New England is pleased to host this exhibition from the Milton Historical Society in our community gallery at the Eustis Estate. W.E.C. Eustis, the original owner of the home, was an amateur photographer during the same time period as Margaret Sutermeister and these photographs provide an interesting comparison to his work featured in the museum. Beyond that, her photographs are captivating and intriguing, giving our visitors an extended view of what life was like in Milton during this period,” said Eustis Estate site manager Karla Rosenstein.

Rosenstein added that it is interesting to see that for women in this time it wasn’t just recording daily life but a creative outlet that had a sense of artistry and independence. Historic New England has several women photographers in its collection that represent this rise in the medium and women’s place in advancing it.

“I think Sutermeister is also photographing people at work, people of color, scientific experiments, etc. It isn’t just her family or landscapes,” Rosenstein said.

Ten of Sutermeister’s photographs are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

For more information about this exhibit:

The Eustis Estate is open Friday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. through May. From June through September the hours will be Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information about this exhibit, please head to Milton Historical Society’s website: http://www.miltonhistoricalsociety.org/