La Jeunesse, 1943
Front row, left to right: Joe Brown, Rod Hinwood, Sam Bodine, Hank Blagden (Director/owner), Wynne Wister, Welby Whitten, Jim MCurdy.
Back row, Charlie Howzie, Don Hagerman, Hugh Scott, ?, Floppy McLeod, Tom Armstrong, Munson Baldwin.
Photograph by Bernard M. Acosta.
Courtesy of the Adirondack ExperienceBorn: 1884
Died: 1965
Married: June Meyers
Children:
Bernard M. Acosta was a photographer, born in San Juan, Costa Rica. In 1918, he moved to New York City and worked in several photo studios. He later was employed by the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, traveling to the South American countries, where he demonstrated film, plates, and paper. When his health failed in 1931, he came to the Trudeau Sanitorium to cure, and in the fall of 1932, started a photography business on Academy Street. 1 On January 15, 1940, Acosta acquired the former William L. Distin studio, along with thirty years worth of Distin's negatives. He was a teacher of photography classes at the Study and Craft Guild, beginning in 1948. 2 He also helped out as the event photographer of major Guild events, such as the Harvest Hop of 1948, after which he donated $50 in profits from the pictures to the Guild.
Older local high school graduates recall that Acosta had been engaged to take senior class portraits and other photos that were used in the Saranac Lake High School yearbook, the Canaras.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, November 27, 1948
ACOSTA HEADS PHOTOGRAPHIC GUILD CLASSES
Bernard Acosta, local photographer, has been appointed head of the photographic classes at the Saranac Lake Study and Craft Guild to succeed Francis N. Kondilis, who resigned.
Mr. Acosta will assume his duties with the Guild with the beginning of the winter term in January. This is the first time the course has been under the guidance of a professional photographer.
The corning term will include beginning, intermediate and advanced classes to be conducted in Mr. Acosta's studio on Academy street. The acquisition of the instructor's services and his professional equipment enables the Guild to offer the student an opportunity to study under conditions which have previously been impossible.
Mr. Acosta has a background of 30 years in professional photography work and he has been exhibiting his work since 1937. Since that time he has won 39 blue ribbons and awards of merit in shows in this country and abroad.
For five years, he was employed by the Marceau studios in New York city and for eight years he was technical representative and demonstrator in South America and the West Indies for the Eastman Kodak company, Rochester. He entered business in Saranac Lake in 1931.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, August 13, 1956
Miss June Myers, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dean Myers, of 14 Academy St., left Friday for San Jose, Costa Rica, where she will become the bride of Bernard M. Acosta on Saturday, August 18. Miss Myers was accompanied by her father to Miami, Fla,, where she boarded a plane. Mrs. Figueres, American wife of the Costa Rican president, has offered Miss Myers her assistance in the absence of her mother who could not be present for the ceremony. Mr. Acosta, who operated a photographic studio in Saranac Lake for more than 15 years, has established a studio In San Jose, where the couple will make their home.
Footnotes
1. "Acosta Exhibition" Guild News July 1945, p. 2
2. "New Photo Class" Guild News Nov. 1948, p. 1.
