Chiaroscuro Perfection

This early 20th century formal portrait is masterfully done. The photographer has managed an exposure that is simultaneously low-key and dramatic: the light comes from the left, chiseling the features without casting deep shadow on any part of the face and without losing highlight tone anywhere whatsoever; the background is dark but with subtle variance and a barely perceptible highlight to the right behind the subject. This is an artist who knew how to make the most of light and how to suit it perfectly to the subject.

Oddly enough, this is a print that was pasted into an album, causing one to wonder if there were other prints mounted or committed to a frame for greater visibility and enjoyment, perhaps something that identified the photographer. The woman's dark eyes and hair, clear complexion, grecian profile and composure inspired the photographer while it also made his work so easy. That is quite rare. Heartfelt thanks to the California seller who allowed it to come my way.

Benevolence

I quite often can tell you what attracts me to a photograph and why I added it to the collection. I know that this young girl has a sweetness and benevolence of expression that reminds me of photos of my mother when she was a child – an expression she never lost when she became a woman, a wife, mother and grandmother, even to the last day of her long life. The photo is suffused with light and has no sharp edges, all the more appropriate to the apparent personality of this subject.

The incised photographer's stamp on the card appears to be Mrs. Tennant, most unusual if I read it correctly, located in Newport News, VA; I think it was taken after 1915 (2.25" x 3.75"). Her dress may suggest a modest station in life.

Great Expectations?

Wedding photos from this era are to be found in their thousands and perhaps they interest me because they differ so much from such recorded events in our own day. I suppose the bride stood – the better to show her gown, but why the groom is so often seated awkwardly is something I have never understood.

As is true in this example, there is not a hint of a smile or evidence of joy in their union – they might have had their portraits taken separately and the result would be the same, but here is proof of their connection all the same, a useful adjunct to the marriage license.

I may be guilty of seeing the expectations of their time through the filter of my own. I will, however, wish them well from a place in time they could never imagine.

Vertical Gothic Church Ladies

This is nothing more than a front yard snapshot of 1920 vintage, but when I was a child in the 1950s such rigid and impossibly stern, birdlike little ladies were still fixtures in nearly any church community, somewhat scary to children but invariably kind and caring underneath their forbidding exteriors.

If there was anything that needed doing in the community that they thought worthwhile, it would get done and a discrete thank you was all that was required. They insisted on respect and a degree of decorum that was not forthcoming from everyone; time had left them stranded in a culture that tried their considerable patience.

These two sisters or close relations have been careful with their resources and though their dress is somber it clearly makes a statement of their financial status as independent women. They took being good hostesses to heart in homes that had a dark museum-like feel – and without a speck of dust to be seen! Even as a child I sensed their considerable pleasure when I admired and commented on their interesting possessions.

You would think I knew these ladies, but from my own status of certain years I look at their kind with an affection that would have surprised them.

Summer Life At Russell Cottages

It took some considerable digging on the web to identify the site of this large glass negative, even with the help of the sign in the upper right – Russell Cottages 1863 – 1890. The negative was surely taken by an amateur photographer, a summer guest soon after 1890 (the dress is clearly early in the decade); the exposure from shade into bright light had a very narrow latitude which required quite a lot of work to get the balance you see here. Had the sign not been included by happenstance no one alive today would know what we are looking at.

Russell Cottages, located in Kearsarge Village, North Conway, NH, was one of many resort hotels and boarding houses in the White Mountains, popular with city dwellers from before the Civil War into the first quarter of the 20th century. Most were not cottages as we think of them, any more than the palatial marble Gilded Age mansions built by tycoons in Newport, RI, which were also referred to as "cottages"; the term described vacation places, whether individual residences or resort hotels.

From a history of the White Mountains of 1886: N. Conway is the chief summer-resort among the White Mts., and is occupied by city-people from early May until late October. The height of the season is in August, when over 3,000 tourists are sojourning here. During the heated term it is warmer than Bethlehem, but cooler than the villages of the lake-country. Evening gayeties are much patronized, and there are hops, concerts, and readings in the halls of the chief hotels. The adjacent roads are visited, every pleasant day, by riding parties; and rambling pedestrians explore the neighboring forests and hills, or fish for trout along the falling brooks. It is the beauty and variety of its environs that gives N. Conway the foremost rank among the mountain-villages, added to the fact that it is at the proper focal distance from Mt. Washington.

This scene is a daytime parade entertainment of some kind, probably at the height of the season in August, in which residents apparently use chairs from the dining room for seating. We can't tell who is seated in the highly decorated carriage, but we can't be far off imagining a king and queen of the season with a fete to follow in the evening. The couple on the bench in the center wave and clap as the carriage moves by at a clip that raises dust.

Russell Cottages, and others of high status at this time, charged rates of from $7 – $10 dollars per week (dining included), about what you would pay for a quick lunch on-the-run today. Many well-known figures frequented North Conway in the summer, including William Dean Howells who describes just such settings in his famous Victorian-era novels.