Photos from the Frank M. Hohenberger Collection, Lilly Library.( From top to bottom) 1920s images of Allie Ferguson, boarding house proprietor, artist Ada Shulz and Grandma Barnes, and Brown County character Chris Brummett.
artistic eye and his keen business sense. By 1920 he was selling his photos for as much as $ 25 each. In the midst of the Great Depression in 1933, Hohenberger was making about $ 5,000 a year. He turned a great deal of his income back into more equipment.
Lorna Lutes Sylvester, in an article for The Indiana Magazine of History in 1975, writes about a running feud between Hohenberger and his artist friends on the merits of photography and painting. It was a subject that he often mentioned in his lectures. The Brown County Art Gallery Association made him an honorary member because of“ his contribution to art through the camera lens.”
Hohenberger’ s weekly column in the Indianapolis Star from 1923 to 1932, and from 1936 to 1954, did much to promote Brown County. Appearing in the Sunday edition, it was entitled“ Down in the Hills o’ Brown County” and it featured the minutiae of daily life— stories of the local characters and details of local politics, court tidbits, and the colony of artists. The column was often accompanied with photos of the county’ s personalities.
Hohenberger published a sixty-three page pamphlet in 1952 using his Star column as the title. Reprinting some of his earlier journalistic work, the pamphlet also contained original material and provided a brief history of Brown County and its resources and attractions.
Another pursuit was a monthly publication named the Nashville Observer. Hohenberger wrote it, published it, and printed it on his studio’ s hand-operated printing press.“ Devoted to Folks Interested in the Future Welfare of Brown County,” proclaimed its masthead. It was issued from 1955 to 1957.
Hohenberger, the“ Sage of Brown County” as he became known, died on November 15, 1963. A few years after his death, the Herron Museum of Art in Indianapolis held an exhibition of his photographs. For his Indianapolis Star column, he was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1976.
Frank M. Hohenberger’ s work that documented the customs, people, and environment of the hills of Brown County now resides at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. There are more than 17,000 prints and negatives in the collection, Hohenberger’ s
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Sept./ Oct. 2015 • Our Brown County 21