Schenectady’s Prize-Winning Student Photographer

Having devoted so much energy over the last few years to presenting something like History with a capital H, we’re getting back to presenting whatever catches my fancy. And after giving so much attention to Albany, it’s time to feature a wider swath of the Capital District.

While browsing old comic books on the internet recently (as one does), I ran across this image of “kid photographer” Evan Richards, a Schenectadian who won the grand prize in Kodak’s National High School Photo Contest in 1946. That led me to wonder about Evan.

Here’s some of the story Evan Richards told in this two-page promotion, which ran in a number of comic books around 1946.

“Here’s how I happened to take the picture that won the Grand Prize. It was Christmas vacation and I wanted to take pictures because the snow was falling and everything looked beautiful. I saw the horse and wagon come up the street. I wanted to get a shot of him as he looked rather photogenic, so I took a couple of pictures. Later I tried to take some especially nice pictures for the contest. I sent in ten including the horse because I thought it had nice composition and told a story. I am glad that I did. It has practically changed my life.”

His first hobby was electric trains, but he sold them to buy a camera. “Then I was a Boy Scout and learned many things and got two front teeth knocked out. Then, unknown to my parents, I started making explosives. This resulted in an accident in which I got a scar on my chin and blew the end off my thumb.” (That information was corroborated by his draft registration card.

Evan was a senior at Nott Terrace High School and had been into photography, with his own dark room at his home on Van Antwerp Road, for about a year and a half when he won this contest with a picture of a Freihofer’s bakery horse and wagon. The Gazette reported “although photography is his main interest, he has done radio work over WGY for several years. He hopes to enter college in the fall.” He appears to have won a number of photo contests in his youth.

We found Mr. Richards’s obituary, and can report that he did go to college, specifically Union College, and also served in the Army. “Evan was a reporter, feature writer and columnist for The Knickerbocker News and a legislative correspondent. He later was employed by several New York State agencies, retiring from the Public Service Commission.” He died in 2015 at age 86.

Evan Richards wasn’t the only Schenectadian who did well in the 1946 contest. Clarice Davis of Mont Pleasant High School took third prize in the news category with a striking photograph of two firefighters spraying water onto an ice-covered building; her title was “Fire’s Icing.” As “The American Girl” magazine reported in its August 1946 edition, she was visiting Akron, Ohio the previous winter, staying in the Y.W.C.A., when fire erupted across the street.

“I started taking pictures from the ‘Y’ window at daybreak. But as film was rather scarce, I conserved it until later in the day, as I saw that ice was forming over everything that was touched by the spray. When I went as near as I was allowed, the spray of water froze over my clothes, making them look as though they were covered with silver sequins.”

It wasn’t reported what Clarice’s prize was, but Evan received two checks, $100 for First Prize in Class I, and $500 for the Grand Prize, “enough money to enable Evan to pay major expenses during his first year at college. That same day, to 317 other high-school students throughout the country, including 60 girls, checks ranging from $5 to $100 were being mailed as prizes in the contest sponsored by the Eastman Kodak Company.” Kodak had just taken over the competition, which had originated with the Stuyvesant High School (NYC) Camera Club.