Mabel Cox Surdam

In 1910, Mabel Cox Surdam hosted a meeting of the Photographers' Association of Binghamton, in her home in that city.^[3] She worked as a receptionist and portrait photographer in Toronto, for the T. Eaton Company.^[4] After eight years in Toronto, she worked at the Breckon studio in Pittsburgh, beginning in 1921,^[5] and was active in that city's photography groups too.^[6][7] She spoke at a meeting of the Professional Photographers Society of New York in 1918,^[8] and the Professional Photographers of Pennsylvania in 1923.^[9]

In 1911 and 1912, Surdam was elected second vice-president of the Women's Federation of the Photographers' Association of America, in the Federation's leadership with Maybelle Goodlander and Pearl Grace Loehr.^[10][11] She had seven works in a traveling exhibit organized by the Photographers' Association of America in 1916.^[12] She spoke to the convention on the topic "Personality in Business" in 1919.^[13] 1922 she was named third vice-president of the Association.^[14] "There is never a convention at which she is not present, either as a speaker or spectator," noted one profile of Surdam in 1919.^[4]

Mabel Cox married fellow photographer Sherman Evarts Surdam in 1898.^[1] Her husband was head of the photographic department at General Electric,^[15] taught photography at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,^[16] and was president of the Professional Photographers Society of New York in 1940-1941.^[17]