HOBART, N.Y. – A new exhibit highlighting the late local photographer Anna Carroll is now open at the MURAL on Main Street Gallery in Hobart, New York. 

The exhibit details Carroll’s extraordinary eye for composition, light, and human emotion in her photos capturing rural life in Delaware County in the 1800s. She picked up the camera during a time when photography was still largely dominated by men. 

Diane Galusha, author of Through a Woman’s Eye: Pioneering Photographers in Rural Upstate, shared that Carroll had an artistic eye for capturing daily life in Hobart.

“She was very deliberate about how she framed and composed an image, and her work really deserves this gallery treatment,” said Galusha.

Born in 1868 in nearby Roxbury, Carroll moved to Hobart with her mother in 1885 and died in 1925. She was one of five children. Carroll’s community service inspired the Anna Carroll Circle which remained active in village affairs through the 1940s – decades after her death.

Most of Carroll’s photos focused on daily life in Delaware County, including rural vistas to formal family portraits.

Galusha’s book highlights late local photographers Anna Carroll, Lena Underwood, and Edna Benedict who Galusha says did not know each other. 

“What a novel thing it was to have three females in this rural county who were pursuing their hobby and their passion, unbeknownst to one another, and that somehow their work, their glass plate negatives, and their snapshots, and other photos survived,” said Galusha.

The photo exhibit is open until Sept. 27 at the MURAL on Main Gallery in Hobart, New York. The gallery is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. or by appointment at (607) 538-3002.