A Gathering ...

This large cabinet card, on close inspection, seems more like a trade convention than a funeral procession. Nils Larson’s establishment doesn’t have quite the style of his white hearse or any of the other spiffy rides on this street.

You don’t suppose Chicago was having an Undertakers Appreciation Day, maybe a Take Your Friendly Neighborhood Mortician To Lunch sort of thing? Nah, probably just a convention.

The men in the middle of the picture are doing that Napoleon “hand inside the coat” pose – or maybe they are packing heat. This photo predates Prohibition and the crime syndicate heyday, but the driver of the hearse sure looks like he might be able to produce a few bodies himself if business got slow. Nah, I’m getting carried away.

Here's Proof!

So you thought cherubs were those chubby, angelic, mythic, baby-like creatures floating about in religious paintings of a certain period. Here is photographic proof that they exist in real life – fully clothed, no less!

In our family, we referred to them irreverently as “little nekkid babies”; in fact, we had one atop our Christmas tree for years until we replaced it with a grownup angel, at which time it graduated (or was demoted?) to the chain fob on a ceiling fan. Like I said, no respect here. I digress.

We treasure our own family photographs going back eight generations to the advent of the camera, so to see this lovely and beautifully dressed child without a name or family identity is sobering. So we have adopted her and she gets respect.

An Edinburgh Street

The late 19th Century date is based on no electric lines in evidence, gas lamps(?), horse drawn streetcar and clothing styles. It is a chilly, bright Winter day, about mid-morning is my guess; there are a few scarves but the little boy holding his mother’s hand in the middle ground is only wearing a Buster Brown outfit; a man in the right foreground is carrying a roll of paper; two men are pushing a cart, one with what looks like paper (news?); there is a coach and a hansom cab.

For a bright day, and considering the 5.5” X 8” dimensions of the print, detail and sharpness are surprisingly low, but we can just read the advertising sign on the streetcar boards which says Furniture Prices (no claim about whether those are low prices, but we can assume). The photographer has set his camera up in direct sun; the light is at a low angle from our right but the windows in the shadow side of the buildings reflect the brightness of the sky; there was considerable light flare on the left and right foreground which I have repaired because it was a distraction from an otherwise pleasant view – and because it was not what the photographer intended for it to be.

San Francisco Burns

This is an original 1906 cabinet card (not postcard) taken from a high vantage point where the urban district gives way to less formally laid out avenues and housing. It was an excellent choice to show the extent of the fires that followed the earthquake. People can be seen standing in groups on the street watching anxiously, perhaps wondering if the fires will reach their own properties. In the foreground you can see personal property stacked on the ground and some of it covered for protection, a few people appear to guard against theft. Are we seeing the property of people who have fled the fires in the distance, or is it from nearby homes in anticipation of the possible need to evacuate?

The photo paper is quite coarse and has a matte finish, the prominent fibers almost make the image appear to be an etching instead of a photograph. The shadow cast by a street lamp indicates the time is about mid-morning and the light is strong in spite of the smoke.

Composure?

Sometimes you look at the expressions on the faces in portraits and wonder why they went to the studio, so you amuse yourself by speculating on what might be going on beyond the need to present some degree of composure in front of the photographer.

In this one, the following scenario comes to mind:

[the wife, sotto voce, out of one side of her mouth] “I’m warning you, Carl, if you pinch me one more time you’re going to need help walking out of here – and you won’t be getting it from me!”

This is not a great portrait, but the photographer didn’t have much to work with. It happens more often than you think.

What do you think?