History is Lunch: Euphus Ruth “Early Mississippi Photographers & Their Cameras”

In the late 1880s John Calvin Coovert opened a photography studio in Greenville, and his work won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition. In the early twentieth century Otis Noel Pruitt began photographing Black and White Lowndes County residents in circumstances ranging from family picnics and river baptisms to fires and funerals, becoming the county’s de facto documentarian.

“These men and others such as Al Fred Daniel and Elisaeus Von Seutter were among the first to make careers of taking pictures of Mississippi and Mississippians,” said Ruth, a Greenville photographer who specializes in the use of vintage cameras. “And the equipment they used was far different from the small digital cameras we have today.”

Ruth will display and discuss several cameras from the early twentieth century used by commercial photographers to shoot architecture, cityscapes, landscapes, and people.

“When those photographers would go out on location they would often take two or three cameras, a variety of lenses, tripods, and other gear,” Ruth said. “Sometimes their vehicle would be loaded down with heavy equipment.”

Euphus Ruth has been a full-time photographer since retiring from his career with a public utility company. He earned his AAS in instrumentation engineering from State Technical Institute in Memphis. Ruth practices collodion and film photography using large and ultra-large format vintage cameras and lenses. His subject matter is primarily older architecture, cemeteries, cityscapes, and landscapes. Ruth’s photography is currently on exhibit at Indigo Gallery at the Wetherbee House in Greenville.

History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.