Louise Deshong Woodbridge (American, 1848–1925)

b. 1848 — d. 1925

Louise Deshong Woodbridge American, 1848-1925 A socially prominent woman who lived in Chester, Pennsylvania, Louise Woodbridge took up photography in 1884 under the tutelage of fellow photographers and friends John G. Bullock, Robert Stuart Redfield, and Henry Troth. She and her husband, Jonathan Edwards Woodbridge, were avid supporters of the arts and sciences. Their cultural affiliations included the Arts Alliance, the Atlantic Union, the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, the Museum School of Art and Industry, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the University Museum of Science and Art. Woodbridge's work, naturalist in style, was shown in 1893 at the Sixth Joint Annual Exhibition of Photography in Philadelphia and at the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Her interest in science led her to found a series of lectures, "Afternoons with Science," which were delivered in Chester for some 25 years on a variety of topics, including history, botany, and evolution. Noted for her clarity of vision and lack of artifice, Woodbridge continued to photograph subjects for the upper classes in New England until 1915. T.W.F.