Photographer's legacy displayed at art gallery

Published March 25, 2007 [ From Delta-Waverly Community News ]
By MARY JO WHITE for Lansing Community Newspapers

DELTA TWP. — Waverly High School grad Linda Granger is a person of many talents. Actress. Director. Founder of the Starlight Dinner Theater at Waverly East Intermediate School.
All on top of a full-time job with the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans' Affairs.
Most recently, she has become the keeper of her grandfather's legacy.
Linda Granger never knew Gerald G. "Doc" Granger because he died before she was born.
But she grew up with his photos, many of them hanging in family members' homes. She has spent the last two years getting them ready for an exhibit that will open soon at the Lansing Art Gallery.

Cathy Hansel Edgerton, a friend of Granger's and administrative assistant at Ledge Craft Lane Art and Craft Gallery in Grand Ledge, fell in love with the photos and urged Granger to share them. "As soon as I looked at them, I thought they were extraordinary," she says.Doc Granger was the chief staff photographer for the Lansing State Journal from 1932 until his death at age 42 of a brain hemorrhage in 1946.
Born in Sunfield, he spent most of his life in Lansing and started photography as a hobby.
Eventually his works were displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., as well as in many foreign countries, and were reproduced in magazines and catalogues.
He belonged to the Photographic Society of America and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
Doc Granger also did commercial work for mid-Michigan companies and enjoyed catching action shots of amateur sports, especially football.
Many accomplishments
His short life included many other accomplishments as well. He was a radio engineer for the Lansing Board of Water and Light for 15 years. As chief technician of telephoto equipment for the Journal, he handled the first pictures-by-wire for Lansing newspaper readers.
He built his own radio station when wireless technology was brand-new. And he built the first TV set in Lansing.
Doc Granger and his photographic legacy have pretty much been forgotten, something Linda Granger is determined to change with the upcoming exhibit.
It will not feature the originals, many of which had been damaged by a basement flood or faded by time. Instead, Granger had them scanned, then she and Steve Scarborough, a local photographer/artist/musician, painstakingly retouched them.
"For this particular exhibit, I needed to assemble each photograph with the mat, the backing, the Plexiglas," she says, "and even assemble the frames - definitely a labor of love."
Some of the images capture the essence of a sunny summer day, with a group of boys sitting on someone's porch steps. Others show farm fields, jumping horses and a young girl playing the violin. That girl was Linda Granger's Aunt Gloria.
Granger's favorite photo, of a woman with a dog in a downtown alley, has been hanging in her home for 15 years.
"What is really special ... is that the shadow on the wall behind the woman is in the shape of angel wings," she says. "I wonder if he (her grandfather) knew that when he took the photograph."
The shots of family members are also meaningful. "I ... love the one with my dad as a boy sitting on the ground with his arms on his knees, a hole in (his) jeans and a big huge smile on his face," Granger says.