Blanche Reineke

Reineke taught school in Girard, Illinois and Ottawa, Kansas as a young woman. She left teaching to become photographer E. H. Corwin's assistant.^[2] By 1903, she was speaking about photography on the Chautauqua platform.^[3] She built her own business in Kansas City, Missouri, as a portrait photographer specializing in children's portraits.^[4] "I never attempt to pose children before the camera," she explained, "because their every movement is full of unconscious, unaffected grace."^[5] Portraits of children by Reineke were exhibited in the Temple of Childhood at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.^[6]

Reineke was elected president of the Women's Federation of the Photographers Association of America in 1913 and 1915, but declined the position both times. She accepted a position as regional chairman instead; she served as press representative in 1914, and as vice president of the federation in 1912 and 1917.^[7][8][9] In 1921, she was elected third vice president of the National Photographers Association.^[10]

Reineke was a charter member of the Women's Dining Club of Kansas City.^[11][12] She was president of the Kansas City Women's Commercial Club.^[2] In 1910, she attended the Third National Conservation Congress, held in Washington, D.C.^[13] In 1922, she was living on a small farm in Shawnee, Kansas.^[14] Emma Blanche Reineke died in Shawnee, Kansas in 1935, aged 72 years.