H. H. Bennett Studio
Near Baraboo, Wisconsin
The H.H. Bennett Studio in downtown Wisconsin Dells is the oldest continuously operating photography studio in the United States.
Henry Hamilton Bennett set up shop here in eighteen sixty-five after a Civil War gun accident badly injured his right hand and ended his work as a carpenter. He turned to photography and spent decades capturing the sandstone rock formations and river scenery of the Wisconsin Dells with a homemade camera and a shutter of his own invention. His images of the Dells ran in Harper's Weekly and other national publications and essentially created the Wisconsin Dells tourist industry.
His stop-action photograph of his son jumping between rocks at Stand Rock in eighteen eighty-six is a landmark in American photography, one of the earliest successful stop-action images ever made. The studio still holds his glass-plate negatives and original equipment, preserved as a state historic site.
