Benjamin Arthur Gifford was born in Danville, Illinois, on Nov. 11, 1859. His family was farmers, but he decided that was not an occupation for him, and he left home in 1880. He was a photographer’s apprentice in Sedalia, Missouri, for a while. After a few months, he formed a studio partnership in Fort Scott, Kansas. Two years later, he sold his share of the business and relocated to Chetopa, Kansas, where he ran his own studio for a few years. He decided he could earn a lot more money elsewhere and headed for the Northwest, where he was to become one of the foremost Western pioneer photographers.
He married Myrtle Louise Peck (1861–1919) in 1884 in Bourbon County, Kansas. In the summer of 1888, the couple moved to Portland, Oregon, and by 1891, Gifford was operating a successful photography studio. The Panic of 1893 forced him to move his business to his home, where he improved on his techniques. By his own account, he was the first photographer in the city to make enlargements using an electric bulb rather than natural light sources, allowing him to make large-format prints indoors at any time of day and regardless of weather conditions.
In 1894, Gifford partnered with Herbert Hale, a local photographer with a strong background in landscape photography. With Gifford’s enlargement setup and printing mastery, the Gifford and Hale studio became very profitable. The same year, he and Myrtle had a son. Journalist William Gladstone Steel invited Gifford to join and photograph an expedition to Crater Lake in 1896 as part of his campaign to promote the lake and its surroundings as a national park. Gifford’s photographs from the expedition were published in several newspapers and magazines…