Christopher Welter, archivist at the Minnesota Discovery Center, chose this photograph of William Opie with Paul and Mabel "Mae" Aubin in Minneapolis.

Take a closer look at this photograph below:

William Opie with Paul and Mabel "Mae" Aubin, Minneapolis, 1911

In July 1911, commercial photographers William Opie (Langdon, North Dakota) and Paul Aubin (Hibbing, Minnesota) attended the Photographers' Association of America’s annual convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. According to the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, “visitors went on a [sightseeing] trip through the Twin Cities yesterday afternoon [i.e., Friday, July 28], visiting Ft. Snelling, Minnehaha Falls, Lake Harriet and other places of scenic interest, winding up with a luncheon at Como Park.”

Although William Opie was living out of state at this time, he previously made his livelihood in Ely, Minnesota. He arrived in Ely in 1893, which itself was only incorporated as a village in 1888—making Opie a pioneering resident. A native of Cornwall, England, William R. Opie (1864-1917) descended from a family of tin miners; in fact, Opie himself worked in Cornwall’s tin mines as a teenager in the 1880s.

Despite his experience in mining operations, Opie pursued the new-fashioned art of photography. “Mr. and Mrs. [Charles] Schaeffer gave a very pleasant picnic party at Pleasure point today in honor of their visiting guests,” according to The Ely Miner on August 28, 1895, continuing, “Photographer Opie photographed the party.” According to an 1899 city directory, Opie was among a mere handful of commercial photographers working within the Mesabi and Vermilion Iron Ranges.

Meanwhile, Paul N. Aubin (1884-1972) is synonymous with Iron Range photography. He initially worked for North Hibbing photographer Carl Thiel before buying the latter’s business outright in 1907. As Aubin’s business grew, so did his studios, with a second in Hibbing and others in Buhl, Chisholm, and Nashwauk. He consolidated his business into a single location in Hibbing in the 1940s. His son Paul L. Aubin, Jr. (1928-2014) eventually took over the business until he dissolved it in 2009—marking more than a century of Iron Range photographic documentation for the Aubin Studio.

As for this particular photographic image (which appears to have been taken in front of Minnehaha Falls), it’s understandable that former Iron Range photographic compatriots Opie and Aubin would pose together. What is more, the two resided in Ely for an overlapping period: Paul Aubin’s father, Polydore Napoleon Aubin (1857-1948), moved the family to Ely in 1895, while William Opie and his family resided in Ely until 1905, when they removed to Rochester, Minnesota.

Documented within this image are two of the Iron Range's pioneering commercial photographers. As for the William R. Opie photographic collection, it includes some of the earliest images taken in the Ely area—especially considering that these are a) non-mining images and b) include outdoor recreational activity, for which Ely is now famous. There are also interesting sidelights—namely, William Opie's brief brush with the Mayo brothers in Rochester and the fact that his brother Edward "Ned" Opie (pictured several times in the collection) survived a mine cave-in in Ironwood, Michigan, in May 1896.

The Minnesota Discovery Center (through the collecting efforts of the Iron Range Research Center) documents natural history and human activity across Minnesota's three Iron Ranges—or, in simpler terms, from Ely in the northeast to Crosby-Ironton in the southwest. This photographic collection is a representative sample.

On a personal level, I became aware of this collection in an off-handed manner: hanging in our library was a studio portrait of a devilishly innocent young boy standing next to his forlorn companion, the family dog. Walking to and fro in the normal course of my daily affairs, I decided that (after many months, if not years, had come and gone) I needed to know more about this tantalizing duo. The boy (as one might have guessed by now) was William Opie’s son Ross, who William apparently found a rather photogenic subject.

The Iron Range Research Center is located on the campus of Minnesota Discovery Center (Chisholm, Minn.) MDC is a private, nonprofit organization whose mission “transports area residents and guests to a space where they can connect with the Iron Range's storied past while creating lasting memories that honor the region's unique human and natural history.” The Iron Range Research Center’s archives collections document the cultural, economic, and environmental forces that have influenced Minnesota’s Iron Ranges—the Cuyuna, Mesabi, and Vermilion—and area residents. These collections consist of personal papers, business and local government records, social and fraternal organization records, church records, photograph collections, maps, and oral history interviews.

Browse the Iron Range Research Center collection on MDL.

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