Charlie And The Goats

Point-and-click cameras are the norm today, and they go a long way toward raising the success rate of the photographing-challenged among us, but cameras were not user-friendly and operators had it tough a century ago.

If those are the recently-disposed-of Christmas greens lying on the sidewalk, and if the Chaplinesque man is dad, and if the goat cart was a present for the kiddies, then mom hasn’t gotten the hang of the new camera – or she is still into the holiday nog! “Aw, Mom, we don’t even have faces in this picture!”

Based on my limited knowledge of goats (Indian cuisine mostly), they look pretty good.

One thing is for sure: that’s one uptown cart – and the reason for adding this blurry snapshot to the collection (but don’t stare too long, it will give you a headache)!

Gentle Reader

From the beginning of studio photography, the respect for education and the wish to make a bookish statement about oneself became something of a convention (an earlier post of a young woman holding a milk bottle was a startling departure from the norm); women and children frequently held flowers which also made a statement about their tastes and interests – throughout the Victorian era and into the 20th century much was made of the symbolism of particular flowers, a code for communicating sentiments.

As mentioned before, dating photos by children's fashions is a struggle because resources are paltry; often one has a sense based on having looked at so many images; in this case the bow, the smocking on the waist, the yoke accessory, cause me to guess early 20th century, but it could be earlier – the shoes and the wicker chair are not useful for precise dating.

In this photo we may be persuaded that this young girl, by her demeanor, might well spend her time reading, but we'll never know that any more than we will know anything else about her; we'll have to settle for knowing that she was/is pleasant to look at and was very likely a pleasant person to know. Write names, dates, ages and places on all your photographs – your heirs and total strangers will bless you for it.

Ghost Woman With Flowers

This post is mostly for fun since it is not a deliberate or intentional photographic print, but how it happened may interest you.

What you see is a chemical reaction between the residues in the original photograph’s emulsion (the fixer chemicals, most likely) and the acids in the back of the cardboard cabinet card mount of another photograph. If someone stacks photos on top of one another like a deck of cards, then puts them in a box or drawer where they remain undisturbed for many years, one photo can chemically “burn” its image into the paper surface of the photo on top of it. Often this image is indistinct and rather ghostly, more so than you see in this example; the image may not be particularly interesting so you pay little attention to it.

The original print (which I hope someone still has) would have been crisp and the fine details would be present, but because of the coarseness of the fibers in the cardboard mount, most of that detail has been lost, yet this ghost print still preserves a remarkable amount of tonal range. A portion of the top of the image is missing because of the way the deck was stacked (pun intended). The chemical image is the reverse of the original, so below you see the proper orientation and some enhancement. When working on such an image it is difficult to decide what is real (part of the original image) and what is not (there is guesswork involved).

By chance, when I have come across the “ghosts” I have never had the good fortune to also find the “corporeal” photos they represent.

But The Bride Was Cool With It!

I took one look at this bridal party photo and thought, "Whoa! Is this for real?"

I have never seen a wedding photo with a bride posed quite this informally, but, my gosh, look at the rest of the party! The groom looks like he's trying to remember how he thought this was a good idea, the best man is wrestling with the toast he thought he had memorized the night before, and the poor maid of honor was in such a rush she left her personality on the seat in the cab. Only the bride seems totally cool with things!

I tried to rationalize – maybe this delightful young woman went to the wrong church and just hadn't noticed, you know – the stress and all.

But the more I look at her face, her exquisite dress, the zany pose, the more I realize she was in complete control. I could relax (way after the fact!). She made everything work. She did things her way!

The print, about 1920, had serious condition issues, not the least of which was the photographer's exposure which sacrificed all the detail in her lovely dress.

Chugga Chugga, Woo Woooo!

No sense getting into the 60 year old debate about whether gender traits are genetic or instilled, but in my early childhood I remember no stigma attached to what toys we played with: we all had teddy bears, we were all cowboys, we all used Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys and erector sets, but most girls didn’t get electric trains and boys didn’t get dolls (but that didn’t mean we didn’t sometimes play with them). As you can see here, as always, mom decided what little boys should wear.

Both of these photos were taken by parents, affluent European on the left (c. 1900), middle class American on the right (c. 1920); neither are masterpieces of photographic art. The earlier tin toy trains showed little concern for realism – as long as the engine had four wheels it could be rolled about; the later ones made some pass at authenticity by adding larger drive wheels and tacking on something that looked like a piston chest, but I doubt little boys cared. Now big boys pay big bucks for the ones that survived.

The accurate scale model electric trains to come were largely a marketing ploy to persuade dad to give what he never had to his sons. It worked – my first electric train came when I was barely old enough to set the heavy engine on the tracks properly, but I learned soon enough; lying on the floor watching it whiz along the tracks is an early memory. My son started early and grew up going to model rail club shows, wearing his engineer’s cap, striped OshKosh overalls and red bandana, standing on a chair to see the trains and operate the controls. Few boys today have any interest in trains.