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36 W e are given a tour of the new Gittings studio by Andy Cordes, client relations (who is also known for his charity endeavors around town, such as co-chairing the Alley Ball featuring Gladys Knight in 2014), and photographer Kenn Stolte, who have been, respectively, 23 and 55 years at the photographic institution. Gittings began in the early 20th century with Paul Linwood Gittings, a man of uncompromising attention to detail and old-school ways, who worked his way up from a photographic plate boy in Baltimore's celebrated Bachrach Studios. He purchased Texas photographic operations from Bachrach, officially unveiling studios under the Gittings name in 1928, in Houston and Dallas. An original studio in Houston was housed in the Spanish Colonial Revival Isabella Court complex, a Mecca for the creative class. Early Gittings portrait sessions often employed Isabella's distinctive scenic stairways as backdrops for family photographs. Another prime location from back in the day was the first floor of the Lamar Hotel, an arrangement that Gittings synergistically developed with one of its most notable subjects, city builder Jesse Jones, whose immense wealth and civic pride would fund and become the Houston Endowment. The famous downtown power hotel where Jones held court in Suite 8F also gave Gittings access to a business and law base, which would define the success of the firm to this day. There are few leading men and women in Houston that the studio has not photographed. Since 2011 alone, GittingsLegal, under the leadership of Greg Lorfing, President and CEO of Gittings, has photographed 50,000 attorneys worldwide. Stolte, whom Gittings recruited from a prominent St. Louis studio in the early 1960s, remembers his mentor's "charm, applied when he needed to be charming." The boss was also a genius at dealing with reluctant subjects, including Miss Ima Hogg, who decidedly did not like to have her picture taken. The Gittings archives include this old-guard, as well as new generations. "History is an edge that is rare in this field," says Lorfing, "but it's not as important as what's happening today. A reflection on the history of Gittings is worthy, but the story of unparalleled personal service, genteel affability, and style are paramount." A PORTRAIT AT 90 ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST PEDIGREED PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS, GITTINGS, ENTERS ITS 10TH DECADE AS IMAGE-MAKER FOR TEXAS TITANS OF INDUSTRY, LAW, REAL ESTATE, MEDICINE, AND PHILANTHROPY — AND THEIR FAMILIES, OFTENTIMES TRAVERSING GENERATIONS. CATHERINE D. ANSPON LOOKS BEHIND THE LENS. Brian Gibb George H. W. Bush, mid-1960s Ima Hogg, 1950s Baron and Baroness di Portanova, 1999 Gerald Hines, 1959 Jesse Jones, 1956 Hugh Roy Cullen, 1950s