American Garden Landscape Photographer Mattie Edwards Hewitt (1869 – 1956)

Mattie Edwards Hewitt by Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection (Library of Congress).

Mattie Edwards Hewitt (1869 – 1956) was an American photographer of architecture, landscape, and designs, primarily on the East Coast. She was born in October 1869 in St. Louis, Missouri, to a middle-class family. She married photographer Arthur Hewitt who taught her photography.

Mattie Edwards Hewitt met pioneer photojournalist and lesbian Frances Benjamin Johnson (1864–1952) in 1901. She started corresponding with her for professional advice, and ended up developing a deep love for her. One of her letters to Frances reads, “I wonder why I expect you to understand me better than most people – is it because I love you so?” In another letter she writes, “If I have been able to make you truly care for me, well, I am very, very happy over it. You do not know the wealth of tenderness there is in my heart for you, and shall I tell you why I have needed you so much and seemed so longing for love and affection? I have already told you of how little of the above I [received] in my home.” Some of her letters to Johnston are part of the book titled “The Woman behind the Lens: The Life and Work of Frances Benjamin Johnston” (1864–1952) by Bettina Berch (University of Virginia Press, 2000).

Mattie divorced her husband, Arthur Hewitt, in 1909, and moved to New York to work and to live with Frances. Together they established the Johnston-Hewitt Studio in New York City, which functioned from 1913 till 1917. Here they specialized in the field of architectural and landscape photography. Unfortunately, their relationship and professional partnership would not last. They broke up in 1917. Mattie began to work solo and became famous in her own right as a commercial photographer. She set up her business in photography with a specific focus on taking pictures for designers, architects, and landscape architects, recording interior and exterior views of home and business houses, and gardens. She continued in the profession until her death in Boston in 1956.

Gate from Italian Garden by Mattie Edwards Hewitt.