Margaret L. Bodine

Margaret L. Bodine (July 27, 1876 — November 24, 1960) was an American naturalist, photographer and filmmaker, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was founder of the Lantern and Lens Gild, a women's photography club in Philadelphia.^[1]

Margaret Lamb Bodine was born in Gambier, Ohio, the daughter of Rev. William Budd Bodine (1841-1907) and Rachel Alice Allen Bodine (1840-1921). Her father was the president of Kenyon College from 1876 to 1891.^[2] Judge Joseph Lamb Bodine was her first cousin; their fathers were brothers. She graduated from Harcourt Place Seminary in Gambier in 1891.^[3][4]

In 1905, Bodine was a founder and first president of the Lantern and Lens Gild, a club for women photographers, which grew out of Mathilde Weil's photography classes for women at Drexel University.^[5] Bodine and Nina Fisher Lewis shared first prize for a botanical photograph, second prize for an interior photograph, and second prize for a portrait, at the guild's first annual exhibition in 1913.^[6][7]

Bodine photographed plants and animals, especially hummingbirds, finches, and flying squirrels, during summers in Northeast Harbor, Maine,^[8] and made documentary films about them.^[9] She wrote in detail about the equipment she used and the challenges she faced in this work. "I know of no branch of picture-taking more interesting than this special kind," she said of her work, adding that "there is infinite variety in it, sufficient difficulties to make it absorbing, and a very large proportion of rewarding results."^[10]

Bodine was a member of the Amateur Motion Picture Club of America of Philadelphia. Films by Bodine included Humming-birds (1931), Ruby-Throated Humming-bird (1931). Bodine wrote articles about her work, including "Adventures in Taming Wild Birds at Birdbank" (1923),^[11] and "Holiday with Humming Birds" (1928) for National Geographic magazine.^[12] The latter article described rigging bottles of sweet liquid disguised as flowers to attract hummingbirds, and inspired the creation of blown-glass hummingbird feeders by Laurence and May Rogers Webster, soon after.^[13][9][14]

Bodine spoke to the Woman's City Club in 1925,^[15] the national conference of the National Audubon Society in 1930,^[16] and to a meeting of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia in 1939.^[17]

Margaret L. Bodine and Nina Fisher Lewis worked and lived together for over 40 years, until Lewis's death in 1948. Bodine received a life income from Lewis's estate, "in partial appreciation of her long friendship, devotion, and companionship."^[18] She died in 1960, aged 84 years, in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.