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Watch Online / Evelyn Cameron: Pictures from a Worthy Life (TV Movie 2009)
Desc: Evelyn Cameron: Pictures from a Worthy Life: Directed by John Twiggs. With Sue Armitage, Katherine Goforth, Donna Lucey, Jonathan Raban. Evelyn Justin Flower was born in 1868 near the English village of Streatham, south of London. Her father, a merchant in the East India Company, kept the family in style. Rather than pursue a normal life for a girl of her times, she liked the adventure found in hunting with her brothers. Evelyn began a relationship with Ewan Cameron, a man 14 years her senior, who studied birds on an island off the north coast of Scotland. They traveled to America 1889 and headed west to hunt in Montana. They returned to Montana to live on a ranch near Terry, Montana in 1891, planning to raise polo ponies to be shipped back to England. Other local women helped Evelyn learn how to manage the pioneer lifestyle required of her. Ewan spent much of his time studying birds of the northern prairies, so Evelyn had to supplement the family income with a large vegetable garden. A boarder at their ranch introduced Evelyn to glass plate photography. She got a 5" x 7" camera and began to take pictures of both the landscape and the people who inhabited it. She combined photos of golden eagles with Ewen's field work for some scientific articles. When the polo pony business did not pan out, Evelyn ramped up the photo business. Shots with children were particularly good business. She also prepared photo albums with two dozen photos that sold for $5. In 1905, a family from Minnessota became neighbors. Their daughter Janet became Evelyn's protege. Ewen became ill, so Evelyn took him to California where he died from liver and brain cancer. Evelyn returned to Montana, becoming a US citizen in 1918. She dies in 1928 from heart failure. Her 35 years of diaries and thousands of glass plates were willed to Janet.