Author Description

Only recently has Margaret Watkins (1884-1969) come to be cited in the annals of twentieth-century photography. She is remembered as a formidable teacher at New York's Clarence H. White School of Photography and as an active member of the Pictorial Photographers of America. But it is her photographs - now key works in the history of early advertising photography and classic examples of modernist photography - that have earned her special recognition within the history of the medium. Watkins unsettled the established art world of the time with images such as still-life studies of dirty dishes in a kitchen sink and a shower hose in a bathroom. This publication accompanies the first major retrospective exhibition of the work of Margaret Watkins with loans from major public and private collection. With nearly 100 full page plates, many never before published, and a thorough telling of Watkins' extraordinary life, this publication is a much-needed monograph on the once lost work of a compelling artist.