Jeanette Klute: Photographer
She was born March 13, 1918 in Rochester, where she grew up. After high school graduation in 1936, she attended RIT, where she studied photographic technology, and the U of R, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in art history.
She was hired by Kodak in 1939, one of the first women hired there. Eventually she headed a team of all women in the research lab who tested and perfected Kodachrome color reversal film. In 1950 her team established a new standard of print quality known as dye-transfer.
Jeannette bought five acres of swamp on Gulick Road in South Bristol in 1954. Her address at this property was Honeoye, and she patronized the stores in Honeoye and considered herself a Honeoye-an. She eventually acquired 170 acres, which included ponds forest, and wetlands. She seeded her ponds with lily pads, cattails, and lotus. She used her property as photographic material, concentrating on individual plants and aquatic animals, to perfect the dye-transfer color process. She was a pioneer in the use of color photography as an art form.
She published a book of her work “Woodland Portraits” (Little, Brown, & Co.) in 1954. This is a collection of fifty color prints of her work, her studies in wild flowers and woodland creatures. Her photographs are on display in several museums around the world, including the Modern Museum of Art in Manhattan, the George Eastman House in Rochester, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, and the Royal Festival hall in London.
In 1982 Jeannette retired from Kodak. She did not give up photography, but also took up painting, something she had wanted to do since a young girl.
Jeannette died August 3, 2009.