Single Mother, Pioneering Photographer: The Remarkable Life of Bayard Wootten
In 1904, Bayard Wootten, a divorced single mother in North Carolina, first borrowed a camera. She went on to make more than a million images.
In 1904, a photographer in North Carolina lent a 4×5 camera to a divorced single mother. He shook his head and muttered several times that she’d “never make the grade.” One year later, he viewed her as his competitor and took back his equipment. So, Bayard (pronounced BY-ard) Wootten, who until then had supported her family by selling small paintings and drawings, went out and bought her own camera.