Vicksburg native J. Mack Moore spent half a century capturing the images of the paddlewheelers that traveled the Mississippi River in addition to life in the River City.

By using homemade negatives and paper, he preserved an era of when the economy relied on the river and commerce thrived in Vicksburg.

“He was a lad at the hem of his mother’s hoop skirt when the Natchez raced the Lee in 1870. Too young to join the crowd at the wharf for that historic contest, he spent the next 50 years making up for his loss. From the hills of Vicksburg, he photographed the passing procession of the river packets. In addition, he bought river negatives from older photographers and compiled a mental library of river lore which has become accepted authority on the topic of the paddlewheelers,” Charlie Faulk wrote in a story for The Sunday-Post Herald in the early 1950s.

Faulk’s story was later reprinted in “Vicksburg Under Glass,” which included a compilation of early photographs from Moore’s collection.

Faulk had been a reporter and city editor at the newspaper for 55 years and was a good friend of Moore’s, Faulk’s daughter Geneva Pickett said.

“My father was just a young man and Mack Moore was an old man, and they had a friendship and bond of photography and the news around town,” Geneva said.

In Faulk’s description of Moore, one may conclude the photographer was an eccentric character, not only in actions, but also in appearance.

“Thin and straight, with white hair parted amidships, he bears a genuine resemblance to Mark Twain, the river’s Samuel L. Clemens, who created the legend of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. An oversized white moustache furthers the Mark Twain tradition and also filters the venom of a tongue which rarely follows a middle-of-the-mouth policy on a controversial topic,” Faulk wrote.

In furthering Faulk’s description of his mentor he wrote, “Moore is vocal, even explosive in his expressions. He is likewise a one-man reference manual on the people and the events of his time, and it is just as well that his business dealings are largely with the travelers who come and go and collectors who transact their affairs by mail.”

Faulk also described Moore as a visionary, writing that before the age of picture windows, he had created his own architectural version by using the discarded glass plate negatives that were used in creating photographic images.

Photography had been a labor-intensive process during Moore’s day, and in place of film. He used glass plates coated in a silver emulsion to capture the image, Pickett’s husband, Bob, who is also a local photographer, explained.

The glass plates could be likened to our modern-day negatives.

“Silver was the compound that was used because when light would hit the silver compound it would form the image,” Bob said.

In addition to making the glass plates, Moore’s printing paper was also homemade.

“Loading his negative and paper in worn frames under the red light of his darkroom, he (Moore) takes them then and one by one, thrusts them through a sliding window into the sunlight,” Faulk wrote.

“It (“Vicksburg Under Glass”) said it sometimes took several days to get his exposure,” Geneva Pickett said, adding that Moore was a perfectionist.

Glass plates have a durability that can endure time and Moore’s photographs can still be reproduced today.

“I have printed an awful lot of the negatives. They were some beautiful negatives. Some of them were difficult to print, but his work was really remarkable,” Bob said.

Today Moore’s glass plate negatives are housed in the Old Court House Museum’s Eva W. Davis Memorial.

However, before the Old Court House acquired the glass negatives, they were first offered to Faulk after Moore’s death, in 1954.

“Mrs. Moore offered the negatives to Daddy because of their close friendship, but he (Faulk) realized the significance of the negatives and thought the Old Court House needed them to preserve them. This was probably one of their first major acquisitions,” Geneva said.

“Moore was a documentary photographer,” Bob said, and in addition to taking his own photographs, he would also take pictures of others’ photographs for historical value.

“He was there to preserve these images before they were lost,” Bob said.

“J. Mack Moore was also a historian,” said Geneva, because he would also take pictures of what would have been random images and homes to help preserve the past.

Many of Moore’s images of the packets (riverboats) were of them being loaded or unloaded with cotton. One of his images that was reproduced and included in “Vicksburg Under Glass” shows the Kate Robbins as it was leaving the Vicksburg wharf so loaded down with bales of cotton that the deck of the boat was barely above the water line.

“The packets still blow for J. Mack Moore. Rebellious and in his eighties, the dean of cameramen in Vicksburg, Mississippi, has run a long course, but as yet the surge of progress has not altered his way of life,” wrote Faulk. “Neither has it overrun a business built on pictures taken half a century ago. He is the last line of defense for photographic methods, which passed with the Pony Express. He defies traditions of food business and normal procedure, yet his prints of the oldtime packet boats are sought after by collectors, historian and rivermen the world over.”