GLENS FALLS -- When people called photographer Richard Dean, who died in 2008, the “Dean of Adirondack Photographers,” it was more than just a play on his name.
“It had that look — that ‘50s connection to the Adirondack tourism,” said Todd DeGarmo, director of The Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library, referring to Dean’s photography. “It was documenting that fantasy — almost a Walt Disney kind of feel.”
Dean shot hundreds of thousands of images of village main streets, motels, tourist attractions and scenic spots in the Adirondacks.
Many of his photos were made into postcards and others were used for tourism promotion.
The photographer and his work will be the topic of a free talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the community room in the basement of Crandall Public Library.
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Mark Bowie, grandson of Dean, will show and discuss images Dean shot from the 1950s to the 1990s, and share personal anecdotes about the photographer.
Bowie, himself, is a photographer and writer about photography history.
The program coincides with an announcement that reproductions of hundreds of Dean’s classic photos can now be purchased from Heritage Photography.
Photos can be viewed at heritagephotography.net or the Heritage Photography studio at 11 Sanford St. in Glens Falls.
Dean, born in Brooklyn in 1913, moved to Glens Falls when he was 5 years old.
He graduated from the College of Photography at Rochester Institute of Technology in 1935, and opened his photography business in Glens Falls in 1947.
Dean was a great photographer and expert source of oral history, said DeGarmo, who used to visit with Dean at his home and studio on Philo Street in Glens Falls.
“It was fun to go to his place because it was such a trove of local images,” he said.
DeGarmo said it is great that Dean’s family has kept the collection intact and is making images widely available.
Frequently, photographer’s collections are split up and sold off in lots when the photographer dies, he said.
Dean is best know for his postcard photography, but he also was a freelance news photographer for The Post-Star and former Glens Falls Daily Times.
In 1985, Dean donated negatives of about 5,000 of his news photographs, taken between 1949 and 1982, to The Folklife Center.
The news photographs are not part of the collection available through Heritage Photography.
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