Good Grief, Lady, What Happened To Your Head!

This remarkable early 20th century image is beautifully composed and executed: the amount of background is limited like the best of the 18th century portraits in oils, the light is perfection, the focus is extremely shallow – not much more than the faces – everything else is soft.

The mother is composure itself, the daughter ambivalent, the baby entertained by it all.

Ever so often culture gets carried away: "bigger is better" whether cars, houses, hats or any number of other things. This is about 1915 when such hats were the rage in higher society. You have to wonder what became of them when the fashion changed; did some enterprising milliner buy them up, take them apart and make six new hats? Five years earlier the craze was for great bucket-like cranial excrescences, but at least you could use those for lampshades after you were done with them!

To The Beat Of A Different Tom-Tom

This dark-eyed subject chose her own unusual ornament – perhaps a feather from one of her hats – which she has stuck Indian-fashion in her hair. It's quite the first thing you notice!

When you edit scans of antique photographs, you discover the ways in which photographers retouched prints; I immediately noticed that there was something going on in the right eye (her left), on close inspection I realized that after the print was made, the photographer used a magnifier and tiny brush to darken the white of the eye to the left of the pupil; as the image aged the overall tone changed but the paint or dye he used did not, so his retouch was a dark blue-gray blotch that no longer matched the surrounding color; digital tools made it easy to replicate what was in the other eye.

This is a late 19th century CDV.

Another Middle American Family

This is another photo from Oklahoma, a more cosmopolitan middle American family that I can date to 1895 with greater confidence than the most recent posting.

If you have nothing better to do with your life, you can entertain yourself looking at antique photos and trying to figure out relationships (yeah, I know, it’s enough to keep track of your own extended multigenerational family, never mind adopting beat up old photos of complete strangers from a century ago). If they are a single family, then there are eleven children with father, mother and in-law, but I think more likely the young woman and younger children may be one generation and the men may be younger brothers of the seated parents.

Note that the three little boys all wear the same cut and pattern shirt, the two girls another. Mother has a good humored visage, but the young woman gives us a haunted expression that is utterly devastating (I feel like asking, “What? What did I do!”); on the other hand, if by some inexplicable chance she is married, or even betrothed, to one of the characters on the back row, that would explain it! I don’t even want to think about that.

But wait, maybe she had planned to go for a ride with her sweetheart but Mom said she had to stay for the family photo, “You wouldn’t want to miss being in the family picture now, would you dear?”

No wonder nobody likes photographers (if the expression on the face of the seated daughter’s face is any indication, this one must have had two heads).

The Middle American Family 1895

This is typical of family photos taken in communities that could not support dedicated commercial studios. The platform rests on roughly shaped beams like a porch but it seems too shallow with no evidence of a protective roof; the wainscoting and plastered wall do not look like typical exterior construction, yet the light seems too bright and even to be an interior, so I am not at all sure where they are.

We are also left at sea regarding the clothing period; most resources on fashion focus on just that – the fashionable attire of upper classes; what people wore in rural or small town America obviously was less tied to the latest thing. This family of nine is very nicely dressed and conscious of presenting themselves well. All of the girls are in pigtails tied with bows; the two on the end might be fraternal twins as they are dressed identically including their brooches; the little boy is wearing what we would call a blouse, not uncommon for the times (we may wonder if this went on until they rebelled or got into fights in defense of their gender); the middle son appears to have been stuck with the hand-me-downs as is often the lot of fast-growing middlers; the older son cuts a manly figure, the only one with a hat. Mom has on her Sunday best. What strikes me is their dark eyes.

The photo came from Oklahoma. I will guess last years of the 19th century – only a guess.

Our Trusty Steed

This wonderful turn of the century print shows us as nice a group of children as you could care to know, and it would be hard to imagine a more handsome group. A donkey is a safe choice for children, stronger and better tempered even than a pony.

It is easy to critique the work of a photographer unless you have “been there and done that”: we have all seen both the opportunity and the shot we want and come up short because of miscalculations regarding lighting or exposure. This was one of those situations – but the photographer felt like it was worth printing anyway and we can be glad for it. There is no studio identification on the mount and it was perhaps an amateur effort. The camera case is sitting by the tree, probably 5”x7” negative size.

Strong directional light is from the upper front left and the exposure was misjudged, but not fatally, just not ideal. Having only the print, I cannot tell if all that was possible was done in the darkroom to bring up the tones in the face and clothing. The original has considerable foxing and accumulated dirt.

Image editing software has the tools to reclaim a print from time and damage, and restore the shortcomings to some degree – if you are willing to invest the time. This one was worth it.