Taken during his association with the Triangle Film Company's "Keystone Comedies" brand (headed by Mack Sennett), he is depicted in an interior publicity shot that was taken by the acclaimed photographer, Fred Hartsook, and the printing quality is exquisite. This example was unused and is in very fine condition as shown. There is a "Triangle-Keystone" stamp on the verso. He made only one film at Keystone, The Village Blacksmith, so this photograph was issued in 1916 to publicize their star.

Reece Gardner was born on August 3, 1893 in Union City, Tennessee. He was a silent film actor, known for The Broken Coin (1915), The Primeval Test (1913) and The Village Blacksmith (1916). He died on August 27, 1954 in Los Angeles, California.

Fred Hartsook (October 26, 1876 – September 30, 1930) was an American photographer and owner of a California studio chain described as "the largest photographic business in the world" at the time. He later became the owner of the Hartsook Inn, a resort in Humboldt County, and two ranches in Southern California on which he reared prized Holstein cattle. Hartsook was married to Bess Hesby, queen of the San Francisco Pan-Pacific Exposition of 1915. Even if the bulk of the business came from everyday studio portraiture, Hartsook gained prominence through his celebrity clients, which included silent era Hollywood actors such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Carlyle Blackwell, other celebrities such as pilot Charles Lindbergh, entrepreneur Henry Ford, and opera singer Geraldine Farrar, and politicians like House leaders Champ Clark and Joseph Gurney Cannon. McGroarty describes a 40-minute sitting with President Woodrow Wilson in September 1919 as "the first formal sitting since Mr. Wilson became president.”

Triangle Film Corporation (also known as Triangle Motion Picture Company) was a major American motion-picture studio, founded in July 1915 in Culver City, California and terminated 7 years later in 1922. The studio was founded in July 1915 by Harry and Roy Aitken, two brothers from the Wisconsin farmlands who pioneered the studio system of Hollywood's Golden Age. Harry was also D. W. Griffith's partner at Reliance-Majestic Studios; both parted with the Mutual Film Corporation in the wake of The Birth of a Nation's unexpected success that year. Triangle was envisioned as a prestige studio based on the producing abilities of filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett.

On November 23, 1915, the Triangle Film Corporation opened a state-of-the-art motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio. The Lincoln Theater is still an operational movie theater owned and operated by the Massillon Lion's Club. The theater has been restored and is host to a yearly film festival dedicated to the films of Dorothy and Lillian Gish. Eventually, the studio suffered from bloat. By 1917, producer Adolph Zukor had taken control of all of the studio's assets. In June 1917, Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett left the company and sold their remaining interests. In 1917, Triangle's distribution network of film exchanges were sold off to the W.W. Hodkinson company for $600,000 (equivalent to $13,000,000 in 2021). Goldwyn Pictures purchased the Triangle Studios in Culver City in 1918. Triangle continued to produce films until 1919, when it ceased operations, and films using the Triangle name were still released to the general public until 1923.