Pauline Kruger Hamilton: The End of an Era looks back at a photographer whose name slipped out of the record despite an accomplished career in early portrait photography. On view from June 20 through August 28, 2026 at Praxis Gallery, the exhibition brings together a selection of Hamilton’s photographs and restores attention to an artist who moved between painting and the camera at a formative moment in photographic history.
Hamilton began her career in Minneapolis as a portrait painter before leaving the city at age 41 for Vienna, where she worked as a photographer’s assistant. In a short time, she built a reputation as a portrait photographer with a refined approach to presence and expression. Her images reflect the overlap between painting and photography in the early twentieth century, with careful attention to light, pose and atmosphere.
The exhibition also points to a broader historical pattern: many women working in photography were left out of the standard narratives that formed around the medium. Hamilton died in 1918, and after that her name faded from public view. Bringing her work back into circulation gives a clearer sense of the range of portrait practice in Europe before and after the First World War, as well as the role of artists who crossed national and disciplinary boundaries.
What remains striking in Hamilton’s photographs is their restraint. They do not rely on spectacle. Instead, they hold the subject in a direct but measured way, revealing the psychological weight that portraiture can carry when handled with close observation. That quality links her to the longer tradition of studio portraiture while also placing her within the early development of modern photography.
The End of an Era presents Hamilton not as a footnote, but as a working photographer whose career deserves a place in the history of the medium. The exhibition offers that recognition through the work itself, without excess framing, and lets the photographs do what they have always done best: hold a person, and a moment, in view.
Image: © Pauline Kruger Hamilton
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