Carol Lazar, 91, a longtime Chilmark seasonal resident, died on Saturday in Brooklyn, N.Y., after a lengthy illness. She was the founder and director of the Chilmark Photography Workshop to which dozens of aspiring photographers from all over the United States came for more than a decade.

It was in 1974 that she started the workshop at her home and in two neighboring buildings on Abel’s Neck Road above Menemsha Pond. Students would be housed near today’s Chilmark Chocolates for the 10-day sessions that included field trips to Oak Bluffs for night shots; to Aquinnah and other beaches for landscapes; to the streets of Edgartown for people shots. Their instructors, who included such notable photographers as Bruce Davidson, Jerry Uelsmann and Aaron Siskind, would familiarize neophytes with the latest in camera gadgetry, show them how to process their film in a darkroom in one of the buildings on the school premises and instruct them in both black and white and color photography. She had no patience with digital photography. Though the workshop had not operated since 1989, Mrs. Lazar had continued, until last summer, to be on the Island spring, summer and fall. She had had a swimming pool and a tennis court constructed on her property and as long as she was physically able, was a determined, devoted tennis player. Also a dog lover; her toy poodles, George, and later, Georgie, were constant companions.

She was born Nov. 2, 1918 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a daughter of Gilbert and Iphegene (Maloney) Bettman. On her mother’s side, she was related to the Ochs-Sulzberger family that owned the New York Times. Her father served three terms as the Republican attorney general of Ohio in the 1920s.

She was a graduate of Walnut Hills School in Cincinnati and of Vassar College, class of 1940. Later, she studied violin at the Juilliard School in New York city. At the beginning of World War II, she joined the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and spent the war years in Morocco and Algeria repatriating refugees. When she returned to the United States, she earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Chicago and did social work briefly in New York’s Harlem before marrying Eugene Stern of Cincinnati. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1951, on a visit to the Vineyard, she married Al Lazar, a graduate of Harvard Law School who had served in the Office of Strategic Services in the war.

The couple moved to Norwalk, Conn., and it was in these early years of her marriage, when her children were small and she began taking pictures of them and their friends, that her interest in photography — in particular, portrait photography — developed. For summer holidays, the Lazars came back to the Vineyard, renting the simple Chilmark camp of Faye Neumann in a field off the State Road. In those days, it was without running water or electricity. Later, they purchased the camp (which they called “the shack”) and six surrounding acres and built a house beside the shack. In time, a third structure that became the darkroom of the photography school was constructed.

Next-door neighbors of the Lazars were the artist Thomas Hart Benton, his wife, Rita, and their children, Jessie and T.P., and the Lazars and their two sons and the Bentons soon were fast friends. Other close friends and swimming companions, first at King’s Beach in Chilmark and later at Zack’s Cliffs in what then was Gay Head, were the writer Max Eastman and his wife, Yvette; Mr. Siskind; anthropologist and children’s writer Bill Lipkind and his wife, Maria Cimino, a singer and New York City librarian; and Leo Yamin, a New York city school principal, and his wife, Alice, an artist.

In 1964, her marriage to Mr. Lazar ended in divorce, but she continued to be a seasonal Chilmark resident in the home they had built. In winter, she lived on Central Park West in New York city. She worked for a time at the advertising agency Young and Rubicam and later at Popular Photography magazine. There, she further developed her own photographic craft and befriended many of the notable photographers she would later bring to teach at her Island school. She also became a teacher of photography at Manhattan’s Spence School.

Island photographer Peter Simon, though he never studied at her workshop, credits her with having inspired him to start doing family photography. “She had signs all over ‘Family Photography by Carol Lazar.’ They made me think ‘Why don’t I do that? And so I started my own business.’ He also applauds the way she managed to convince first-class photographers to come to the Island to instruct at her workshop.

In addition to her enthusiasm for photography, Mrs. Lazar was known for her conviviality, her hospitality, her generosity and her circle of artistic friends. She was a valued violin player with Island chamber music groups.

She is survived by two sons, Daniel, of West Cornwall, and Paul of Brooklyn, N.Y., and three grandchildren. A burial service will be held March 22 at the family plot in Cincinnati. In lieu of flowers, gifts in her memory may be given to the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, P.O.Box 1477, Oak Bluffs 02557 or the Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard, P.O. Box 190, Edgartown 02539.