



images that haunt us
These pictorial studies of two female dancers in motion are believed to have been taken at the former Ruth Doing Camp for Rhythmics in New York state’s Adirondack mountains. In the 1920’s and 30’s, photographer Delight Weston lived with camp founders Ruth Doing (1881-1966) and Gail Gardner (1878-1949) in New York City, along with other women artists, in a building at 139 W. 56th St. near Carnegie Hall.
Established in 1916, the summer camp was first located on the shores of Upper Chateaugay lake near Lyon Mountain until 1925, when it moved to Upper St. Regis Lake in Paul Smiths, New York. Renamed the Gardner-Doing Camp after this time, it was coeducational: besides regular summer camp activities, it specialized in the “rhythmic” style of dancing popularized by famed dancer Isadora Duncan, whom Ruth Doing was a former student of. Doing’s life partner, Michigan native Gail Gardner, had earlier made a name for herself as an accomplished and world-traveling opera singer. [quoted from Photoseed]