Oscar G. Mason

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Oscar G. Mason's portrait of elephantiasis published in Fox.
Oscar G. Mason's portrait of elephantiasis published in Fox.

Oscar G. Mason (1830 - March 16, 1921), better known as O. G. Mason, was an American photographer and radiographer. For most of his professional life and until his retirement in 1906, O. G. Mason directed the photographic department of Bellevue Hospital in New York City.


Very little information exists of his activities as a daguerreotypist before Bellevue. Records show that Mason worked for the Meade brothers as chief camera operator at their 233 Broadway, New York, gallery soon after it opened in 1850.[1] There is also evidence that he spent a few years as a freelance photographer in Vermont and Springfield, Massachusetts, before returning to New York sometime in the early 1860s. [2] According to his obituary in the New York Times, O. G. Mason's affiliation with Bellevue began in 1856, but there is very little evidence to support this.[3]


In 1868 the Bellevue Department of Photography and a chemical laboratory were both created in former resident quarters of the Cook House on hospital grounds. Alterations included a 12 by 14 foot skylight and a partitioned space within the gallery, presumably for a dark room, that measured 6 by 12. Financial oversight was the responsibility of apothecary John Frey and he published the first report for the department in 1870. [4] All subsequent reports were written by Mason. From its inception, production of the department was ambitious and over 1200 positive paper prints were made that first year. Frey reported the success of the department with these words:

Of the positive paper prints... they have been of such a character as to already attract the attention of the medical profession, not only in our immediate vicinity, but at a distance, and have called forth many expressions of interest and commendation. Members of the medical profession begin to visit the Department periodically, for the purpose of obtaining such photographs as pertain to each one's more especial class of investigation. Many interesting cases of skin disease, factures, and results of important surgical operations have been fully illustrated by series of photographs, which give opportunity for comparison and study not offered by any other means.

O. G. Mason's duties included photographing deceased unknowns, a service that was pioneered at Bellevue. Bodies were received in a new facility which was modelled after the Paris Morgue and built in 1866. An unidentified body was displayed on a table and could be viewed through for about 72 hours.[5] Unclaimed bodies were then moved to a cloistered yard where they were photographed by Mason and awaited burial in a numbered grave at the Hart Island, City Cemetery. Mason's annual reports emphasize the importance of this work and the relief it brought to the bereaved who visited the morgue in search of missing loved ones.


O. G. Mason was prominent in his field, a staff contributor to The Photographic Times weekly and The photographic instructor for the professional and amateur series, both publications put out by the press of Scovill Manufacturing Co. in the late 1800s. He served for a time as president of the American Institute, Photographic Section and as both secretary and treasurer, passim, for the American Microscopical Society.[6] Mason consulted for Lewis Morris Rutherfurd [7] on astronomic and spectral photography, and maintained a private office at 333 E. 26th Street for his telescopic and freelance projects. O. G. Mason is best remembered, however, for his clinical medical photography accomplished during his forty plus years at Bellevue Hospital. He was frequently called upon to provide illustrations for monographs published by leading physicians and surgeons associated with the hospital and its medical college, including Lewis Albert Sayre, John Call Dalton, and Francis Delafield. [8] His most notable photographs appeared in the great photographic dermatology atlases written by George Henry Fox. [9]

Contents

[edit] Darkness & Light

Mason was the photographer for Helen Campbell's 1893 exposé of New York's slums, titled Darkness and Daylight; or Lights and Shadows of New York Life; for this work, his photographic images were rendered as steel engravings. Connections with Piffard, Jacob Riis, flash photography and the Sanitation Commission.

[edit] O. G. Mason today

  • Fear No Art exhibition at Oakland Arts Center, Pontiac Michigan.
  • A Morning's Work, by Stanley Burns, M. D.

[edit] Blindstamp

Blindstamp used by O. G. Mason
Blindstamp used by O. G. Mason

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Craig.
  2. ^ Craig.
  3. ^ Times obit. In a report written January 1, 1882, Mason comments on twenty years of research in photomicrography. More than likely, this would have been commission work for the hospital. The hiring of a staff microscopist and the creation of a department of microscopy was first proposed in 1861.
  4. ^ Board of Commissioners Report for the year 1869.
  5. ^ Richmond.
  6. ^ O. G. Mason was also a member of the American Photographical Society, the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, and the Photographic Exchange Club of Philadelphia (George Eastman House Catalog).
  7. ^ Morton. By 1865 he was actively printing Rutherfurd's negatives for the astronomer's photographic study of lunar phases. Mason disseminated Rutherfurd's as well as his own moon prints and later petitioned to have these images placed in New York public schools.
  8. ^ Wood. For a more complete bibliography of his published medical images vide: Mason.
  9. ^ Rowley.

[edit] References



Persondata
NAME Mason, Oscar G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mason, O. G.
SHORT DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH 1921
PLACE OF DEATH New York City, New York, United States
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