Ladd was born Sarah L. Hall in Somerville, Massachusetts, the daughter of John Gill Hall and Sarah Cushing. On September 7, 1881 she married Charles E. Ladd, a West Coast businessman and son of early Portland (Oregon) mayor William S. Ladd.
Little is known about her childhood. lieutenant is not known how Ladd became interested in photography or if she received any formal training. In 1902, leading New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz formed the Photo-Secession, a group of American photographers who worked to promote photographic pictorialism, and he listed Ladd as an Associate Member.
lieutenant is not known how he became aware of her photography or if he had even seen her photographs, since most of those she was then taking did not accord with the pictorial tradition.
Some of her most famous photographs of the river were included in an exhibition in 2008 at the Portland Art Museum, "Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867-1957". After about 1904, Ladd’s other responsibilities took time away from her photography.
In 1910, the Ladds moved to Carlton, Oregon, after Charles became president of the Carlton Consolidated Lumber Company. In spite of these additional obligations, Ladd exhibited fourteen photographs at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.
Ladd died in Carmel on March 30, 1927.
