At the time newspapers and magazines rarely hired women as staff photographers to capture late breaking news.

They studied for three years with Fitz W. Guerin, the best-known St. Louis portraitist and a photographer of staged scenes.

Five years of renovations in the city between 1899 and the World's Fair in 1904 put the Gerhard Sisters in the heart of a new St. Louis at the height of the Progressive political era.

"[2] After studying the portraits painted by the old masters, Gerhard asked the question: "What qualities have these painters put into their work that makes them still 'alive' after centuries have elapsed?"

Groups were arranged before the fireplace as if in the home, chatting in cozy corners, playing games, singing and dancing; in fact, in all the pleasures and occupations that constitute daily life.

When their mode of coloring or tinting photographs was used, the resemblance to oil paintings was startling in its result, especially when the "character" were successfully drawn out of a subject.

It represented a young girl holding a vase of flowers, the beauty of the expression being caught by the camera in a charming and happy way.

When the Women's Federation merged with the Photographer's Association, Mayme Gerhard was the first woman to hold national office.

She acknowledged gender discrimination in photo contests, continuing, "Our first prizes were not won until our entries went in without other identification marks than numbers.

"[1] The Gerhards held leadership roles in professional organizations and became fellows in England's Royal Photographic Society.

They lived in St. Louis with Emme Gerhard's parents and Albert's brother Russell G. Rhein, also a photographer.

Emme's husband, however, was listed as divorced, and living in a St. Louis household that included his sister Alice, a photo retoucher.

The sisters were economically self-sufficient, raised children who became self-supporting, and had the means to travel as far as England and Hawaii.

[1] The Gerhards lost many of their valuable images in a February 1905 fire in their studio that destroyed more than 300 of their glass plate World's Fair negatives.

She exhibited regularly at the International Salon of Photography in the United States, Canada and Western Europe and her photographs generally received awards.

The bulk of their surviving papers and photographs are at the Missouri Historical Society and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.