Margaret Watkins

[1] She was also a pioneering modernist photographer; her still-life images of household objects arranged in compositions influenced by abstract art were highly innovative and influential.

[2] She lived a life of rebellion, rejection of tradition, and individual heroism; she never married, she was a successful career woman in a time when women stayed at home, and she exhibited eroticism and feminism in her art and writing.

[2] While teaching at the Clarence White school from 1916 to 1928, her students included Margaret Bourke-White, Laura Gilpin, Paul Outerbridge, Ralph Steiner and Doris Ulmann.

In 1928, Watkins embarked on a planned three-month holiday to Europe, which ended with her moving permanently to Glasgow, Scotland to care for three ailing aunts.

[8] This exhibition showcased 95 of her photographs dating from 1914 to 1939, including portraits, landscapes, modern still lifes, street scenes, advertising work, and commercial designs.

[5] A stamp depicting Watkins' photograph, The Kitchen Sink was issued on March 22, 2013 by Canada Post as part of their Canadian Photography series.