Archives West Finding Aid

Albert Barnes Kinne was born around June 1, 1853. He resided in San Francisco, where he was actively engaged in public affairs and ran an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Kinne also operated a photography studio in San Francisco, located at 1040 Shotwell Street. Around 1900, he relocated to Nome, Alaska, where he set up a new studio and worked with the Wild Goose Mining and Trading Company. By 1903, he had formed a partnership with well-known Nome photographer Beverly B. Dobbs. Their studio, Dobbs & Kinne, was dissolved when Kinne moved eighty miles east to the gold mining camp of Council (aka Council City), and started a new photography business around 1905. In 1911, Beverly Dobbs sold the Nome studio and its glass negatives, including some made by Kinne, to photography entrepreneurs the Lomen Brothers, who created prints of the images under their own imprint.

Kinne took a job as manager of the Alaska Telephone & Telegraph Co. around 1907 and may also have held a teaching job in Council in 1910, when the U.S. Bureau of Education set up schools to educate native populations in the area. On Nov. 20, 1913, Kinne was appointed postmaster of Council. He married his wife, Nellie, in 1921, and continued to live and work in Council until Jan., 1925, when he returned to Nome and established a mercantile business. Although his business was reportedly thriving in Nome, he became despondent, possibly over ill health, and shot himself to death in Aug., 1925.

After Kinne's death, his wife apparently abandoned their home, along with hundreds of photographs contained there. In 1941, a visitor managed to save a few samples of the poorly preserved photographs and glass and nitrate negatives from the collapsing home.