Friday, March 16, 2012

The German American Collection, It All Ends in Smithtown













Written on the back, "1956 Mr & Mrs B.C. Oakside Rd. Smithtown." Is this a bit of a let down for the last image of the collection? Yes and no. To recap, a dealer had purchased a large collection of photos at an estate sale, sold some of the best images separately, and then bundled the reminder into groups, put them up on EBay, and this was the only lot that I won. The huge gaps make it impossible to build a true narrative. Still, we can know that this collection had plenty of images from both the United States and Germany. What we can't know is how the two came together. Did a German branch of a family send photos to their American cousins? Was there a move from Germany between the wars or after World War 2, followed by marriage into an American family? In any case, somehow or another, some branch of this family ended up in a post war suburb on Long Island. The good life dreamed of by so many, recorded with this one, very faded color photograph. Click on German American in the labels section to bring the whole lot up. Good, bad, and indifferent images, but worth it.

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