A Step Back in Time: The Work of Photographer Pingree W. Louchheim

For three decades, The Southampton Press had one staff photographer.

She wove between social events and news happenings, photo ops and candid slices of life — coming and going from the smoke-filled newsroom on her own schedule, explained former editor Peter Boody, where she spent most of her time in the darkroom.

When she emerged on Tuesday mornings, in her apron — “a fresh and bright face among us trolls,” he said — she would hang black-and-white photos on a clothesline just outside her door. The line-up spanned shots from bake sales and bridge clubs to Saturday hikes with the Trails Society.

But her masterpieces, he said, were “dramatic scenic photos that captured the threatened charms of the wide-open spaces of Water Mill, Bridgehampton and Sagaponack.”

She was an undeniable presence on the East End. But inside the pages of the newspaper, she worked in relatively obscurity, her photos identified with just a set of initials — and, often, her signature sense of humor.

“Her credit line, ‘PWL Photo,’ is unforgettable to me as it speaks of a time when capturing both the truth and the beauty of the South Fork was a mission,” Boody said. “Pingree led that effort.”

For the first time, on July 11, “Through Her Lens: A Place in Time” will showcase over 100 photos shot by Pingree W. Louchheim from 1972 to 1998 for The Southampton Press, according to her daughter-in-law, Summer, who curated the exhibition that will be on view at the Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House.

“I knew that she was a photographer and I knew that there had been some level of involvement there,” she said, “but the number of photos she took, the period of time over which she took them, the amount of energy she had put into developing them, I just had no clue.”

The shocking discovery came in November 2023, when the family home in Sagaponack hit the market and Summer Louchheim accepted the task of cleaning it out — sorting through relics like abandoned bottles of shampoo from the 1970s, and promptly tossing them, to stumbling across a massive, jumbled pile of three-ring binders on the floor of a child’s old bedroom.

Thirty-seven binders, to be exact, bursting at the seams with negatives.

“I was just curious,” Summer Louchheim said. “We had asked what to do with them and had been told that they should just be thrown in the dumpster.”

In that moment, she turned to look at her mother-in-law, who simply said, “My life’s work — and for what?” Not only did the sadness and resignation catch her off guard, but her words did, as well.

In the four decades that she had known Pingree Louchheim, she had come to describe her as many things: a mother of three, a former fashion model, an equestrian, citizen activist, trails advocate, airplane pilot, and a creative spirit — but never as a woman who worked.

And so, once the rest of the house was empty, Summer Louchheim spent a week lying on the floor with the binders and, through her drugstore reading glasses and a magnifying loop, peered at the tiny black-and-white negatives page by page.

There were nearly 40,000, she said, and she couldn’t help but look at every single one.

“It wasn’t long before I realized that I had struck gold,” she said, “that these were really and truly images from a different place and time.”

Photography, Summer Louchheim learned, was her mother-in-law’s passion and profession for most of her life. Through her work, she could be an artist, a craftsman, a storyteller and a journalistic recorder, Pingree Louchheim explained, “of what is and what was.”

“Artist because I could create a beautiful image,” Pingree Louchheim said. “Craftsman because I learned the techniques to control the image before it was transferred to film and to shape and modify it to my liking when it was printed. Storyteller and journalist because a photograph can truly be worth a thousand words.”

She picked up her first camera, a Baby Brownie, in fourth grade and created a scrapbook of her classmates, family members, and the animals and pets on their working farm in Michigan.

“But it wasn’t until I was a college student at the Yale School of Design that I was able to immerse myself seriously into the art and practice of photography,” she said, “with excellent teachers and wonderful darkroom facilities.”

She brought those talents to the East End when her husband, Don, bought The Southampton Press in 1971. They immediately converted the operation to a modern photo-offset printing process, which allowed for the extensive use of darkroom photographs — unlike the obsolete 19th-century hot-metal press, she explained.

There, her 25-year career as photo editor, staff photographer and darkroom superintendent began, she said. She would shoot at least 20 rolls of film per week, selecting about 50 photos to process for the editors to use in the newspapers.

She never took a paycheck — and her name never appeared on the masthead.

“She didn’t want to be considered ‘the boss’s wife,’” Summer Louchheim said.

And she wasn’t. In those years, she set the tone of photography for the newspapers, according to Express News Group Photo Editor Dana Shaw, noting that the farming and rural landscapes that she once captured are now all but gone.

“I think there are a lot of great things about the East End of Long Island to this day,” Summer Louchheim said, “but there was a simplicity and a charm and just a sweetness that I don’t feel is easy to come by anymore, and I think that needs to be acknowledged and enjoyed and cherished. I think she really captures that in her images.”

Pingree Louchheim preferred real over pretty or perfect — the photos that told a story. She covered every aspect of community life, from the mundane and ordinary to pivotal events in the East End’s history. There are bake sales and board meetings, carnivals and coastal erosion, farming, fishing, horse shows, charity auctions, civic organizations, and more.

There are surprises — an unexpected snorkeler popping out of the sea, a disembodied arm guiding a windmill to its proper position, a befuddled boy behind a bagpipe player.

“These images are not even necessarily Pingree’s favorites and they’re not even necessarily ones that were published in the paper,” Summer Louchheim said. “They’re ones that either made me giggle, or are just so unbelievably beautiful they can’t be passed up, or so important that they can’t be passed up.

“But the ones that make me, selfishly speaking, the happiest are the ones where I can almost feel her laughing behind the lens,” she continued. “Those are the ones that make my heart sing.”

“Through Her Lens: A Place in Time,” featuring photographs by Pingree W. Louchheim for The Southampton Press from 1972 to 1998, will open on Friday, July 11, at the Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House. For more information, visit bridgehamptonmuseum.org.