Sunday
Mar142010

Is Anyone There?

DateSunday, March 14, 2010 at 1:28PM

The absence of content for the past while has been due to my involvement in other projects: a addition to the house, bookbinding, canary breeding, all of which have taken me away from the hours spent restoring and posting photos. I have added some photos to the collection, but I have at least a thousand photos that meet the standards of those you have seen on Timebinder still to be restored and posted here on Timebinder.

Something disturbing I have noticed is that the antique photograph market, particularly on eBay and other auction sites, has seen an incredible inflation in the prices being asked for photos that can only be described as ordinary by any standards; while many sellers have a very good idea of what photographs are likely to bring and have every reason to expect to obtain market prices, there are others who seem to think that any old photograph of any size, condition and subject is worth a small fortune (at least 40% of eBay sellers are now asking $100 to $1,000 each for photos that are not extraordinary and are worth less than $50 by any stretch of the imagination, and of course very, very few of these photos are selling - which should tell them something). Timebinder doesn't mind paying a very good, sometimes high, price for any photo that is unusual or is an exceptional example of the photographer's art, has historical significance or is exceedingly rare or intriguing in its subject matter, but only about 5% of the millions of existing photos would ever fall into those categories.

As you may imagine, the time it takes to prepare antique photos in the manner I have chosen to do it takes a great deal of time. Timebinder has experienced virtually no response, comments or feedback on the postings that have been made since its inception even though there appear to be people who visit the site; working in a nearly complete vacuum leaves the collector wondering if the effort is worth it and if the site serves a purpose. I may post a questionnaire in the near future which you may respond to, if you like, which may answer these questions; while Timebinder won't necessarily go away, it may not see as much regular content as was the case in 2009.

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Wednesday
Jan132010

Thom's Family Gathering

DateWednesday, January 13, 2010 at 3:21PM

All we know is marked in pencil on the back of this large cabinet photograph: a family named Thom who lived on the hill (?) perhaps somewhere in Connecticut. It is likely a multi-generation family event on the farm in the mid 1890s. A substantial house with painted finish on windows, doors and trim but with the clapboard unpainted and weathered dark, the lawn not manicured or planted as it might have been were it in town.

A deliveryman has arrived, but what sort of product would a farmer need to have brought in I have no idea. We see typical day dress for the period, certainly for such a get together. Of 17 people, I am amused to note that only three appear to be looking at the camera, not at all typical of the sort of focus you might expect if a professional photographer had been summoned for the occasion, so maybe someone in the family is manning the camera. Many hundreds of thousands of this sort of photo have been taken in every part of the world in 170 years, and so many are still with us today.

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Tuesday
Jan122010

Electric Ride

DateTuesday, January 12, 2010 at 7:35AM

Once again, indulge my fascination with streetcars: the Woodland Heights trollies of the Springfield Traction Company that took over services in Springfield, Missouri in 1895. Had I lived in an era when streetcars were ubiquitous, no doubt my romantic notions would be tempered by the reality that they were dirty, noisy and uncomfortable, only preferable to shank's mare if you had a way to go, but they sure do look cute in miniature running around my Christmas tree dinging merrily! Certainly, in my own time, smelly diesel city buses were hardly my idea of the way to go, but you get the idea – time and distance trump reality.

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Tuesday
Jan122010

Seeing Gotham

DateTuesday, January 12, 2010 at 5:54AM

Touring New York City in style in the early years of the 20th century! An open vehicle with solid rubber tires was acceptable to folk who for at least two generations paraded about in horse drawn open carriages and barouches and felt very good about themselves indeed (tourists today pay exorbitant prices to do so in Central Park!) This tour bus, not much more than a truck fitted with seats, was small compared with others of this kind that were easily three times this length and carried perhaps as many as 42 passengers.

Today we would want cushier seats with safety belts, an enclosure with conditioned air and large windows, and the driver would need to be amplified so we could hear the canned script – we could not be expected to be ferried about in the equivalent of a delivery truck or depot hack, but I am sure these tourists were content to pay the fare to satisfy their curiosity about life in Gotham. A very good time was had by all!

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Monday
Jan112010

Quintessential Victorian

DateMonday, January 11, 2010 at 8:09PM

My title expresses my opinion that this is a prime example of the best CDVs of the Victorian photographers. The convention of composing a head-and-shoulders portrait with the face near the center is typical; today we would tend not to have so much blank background above the head and hat.

This 1880s image is as charming as they come. A very attractive young woman, quite well dressed without any pretensions to being a fashion plate – she is the subject, not her clothes, yet she has a certain flair with the tiny ruffled edge to her standing collar and pin offset by the informality of the way she has tied the velvet ribbon around her throat. Women's styles of the time often interpreted the dress of a country maid in a high style fashion, but it worked very well when it was not too extreme.

Another thing that attracted me to this portrait is that the young woman makes me think of the models that the French Impressionist artist Auguste Renoir painted during this same period. One always wonders whether an artist paints an image true to a particular model who sits for him or if he paints an ideal based on what he sees before him (some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters' models are very well documented in photographs – perhaps because they had a propensity for marrying them – so we know they were often guilty of painting to a particular ideal), but here I see a face that Renoir might well have painted. This image looks like the portraits he painted that are famed for their naturalism and the certainty that you are looking at an identifiable person and true likeness; this young woman's no-nonsense persona leads you to suspect that she would never have countenanced being the subject in one of his nude bathers scenes for which he is also quite famous.

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