Kate Pragnell
Kate Pragnell was an English artist and photographer. She was also a suffragette and documented the June 1908 procession.Biography
Kate Pragnell was born in Stockbridge, Hampshire, in 1856. Other sources state she was born in Newport, Isle of Wight, in 1853, or around 1851.
In 1891 she was living at 13 Bath Road, Chiswick, together with artist Emily Bird. In 1901 she moved at 39 Brompton Square, Kensington, where she also had a studio, from 1900 to 1911. Her other studios were at 164 Sloane Street, Chelsea, from 1893 to 1900, and at 16 Albemarle Street, Westminster, from 1911 to 1915.
In 1908 she was commissioned to photograph the Chelsea Historical Pageant, held in the Old Ranelagh Gardens, Royal Hospital.
She was inspired by Alice Hughes; other pioneer women photographers of her time are: Christina Broom, Lallie Charles, Rita Martin and Lizzie Caswall Smith. On the contrary of Hughes, Pragnell also photographed men, something unusual at the time for a female photographer. Some of her subjects: Elyse Blythe after she won a gold medal in golf at the North Berwick Ladies Club; Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne; General Sir Beauvoir de Lisle; the wedding portrait of Mrs Lionel Portman on the cover of Country Life on 11 November 1905.
Her work appeared in Bystander, Black and White, Cassell's, Woman at Home and Heart and Home; Pragnell was basically the main photographer of Heart and Home. By 1901 she was working for the Illustrated London News that published Pragnell's photographs of the suffragette procession of June 1908.
Pragnell took all photos by herself, and employed only women for the printing process.
