Family Photos

 

Grandmother, father, mother and daughter? That's my guess, anyway. 

Karsh of Ottawa

It's interesting to see what can be found on EBay.  I was just shuffling through old photographs when this image caught my eye.  It was, of course, a nice studio portrait, but what really drew me in was the printer's mark in the lower right hand corner.  "KARSH OTTAWA" refers to one of the most famous portraitists of the 20th century.

 Yousuf Karsh was born in 1908 in Turkey.  He was a survivor of the Armenian genocide.  In 1923, he arrived in Canada and was taken in by his uncle, a studio photographer who taught his nephew the trade.  In 1932, Karsh opened a studio in Ottawa, the capitol of Canada.  He would eventually land an important client.  Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister of Canada, and he not only sat for portraits of his own, but began arranging for Karsh to take portraits of visiting dignitaries.  In 1941 he took  a picture of Winston Churchill that would become the single most reproduced photographic portrait in history.  In 1945 Life magazine paid Karsh $100 for use of the Churchill portrait  on the cover.  After that, Karsh would receive a number of commissions from Life for other portraits of some of the most prominent people in the world.  Karsh died in 2002.

Take a look at the soldiers uniform and a patch can be seen identifying him as a member of the Dutch army.  The most obvious explanation is that he was in exile from the Nazi occupied Netherlands.  It was almost certainly taken after the Churchill portrait.

The Photographist

When I first started gathering up old photographs, I was only interested in cabinet cards, CDV's, and glass negatives.  Mostly, because they were really, really old.  Of course, back then, in the late sixties, World War 2 veterans were everywhere, and I knew quite a few World War 1 veterans as well.  In fact, I knew a lot of people who were born in the 19th century.  I knew people who could tell me about the first time they had seen a car, an airplane; the first time they had heard a radio or seen a talking movie.  Somehow pictures from the recent past seemed far less interesting.  As time passed and as people born in the twenties, thirties and forties became fewer in number, the photographs they took became fascinating to me.  And now, for some unknown reason, I've started looking for really, really old images once again.

It didn't take a lot of research to dig up some info on J. K. Patch of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.  Jonas King Patch was born in 1824 and became an itinerant photographer in the daguerreotype and tintype era.  Eventually he settled down at one location, in Shelburne Falls, and opened a studio.  Jonas died in 1909.  He had several children, one of whom, Henry S. Patch followed in his father's footsteps and took over the studio.  Henry was born in 1856 and died in 1939.  I found a notation that Henry gave up the studio ten years before his death.  I also found a brief notice where Jonas was referred to as a prominent photographist.  A term I've never run into before, but I like it.

House Proud

I'm always finding photos of people posing on their lawns.  I couldn't help but notice, on these two, that the top photo shows the neighbor's house.

The Green Album 4

The last entry from the Green Album had military pictures which made me think of World War 2.   Think of this page as the home front.  Makes me wonder if this album got sent to some military base.  So if it did travel, where did it travel?

Click on The Green Album in labels, etc., etc., etc.

The Final Melvine Album Page

This is the third, and as of right now, the final Melvine album page.  Melvine was a little girl from Buffalo, Wyoming, at some point moved to a suburb of Seattle, and eventually ended up in the military.  Other than that, I don't know anything about the lady.  Click on Melvine in labels at the bottom of the post to see the other two pages.

Anyway, it's kind of hard to read the white grease pencil captions, so top to bottom of the individual photos. 1. On the side of the image, "New Years Day In Buffalo." and underneath, "Nell & Marie."  2. "Larry Fritz Bud Hal."  3. "Melvine Marie Nell." 4. "Dad Mom." 5. "Dad Mom Buffalo Wyo." 6. "Mom & Dad Buffalo." 7. "Melvine" 8. "Jerry Melvine Larry Bev." 9. No caption. 10. "Aunt Mae & Uncle Ray."

Culver City Trash, Family Dinner

Things do change.  Just a few weeks ago, I was complaining about how few examples of true found photography, pictures literally found on the street, I have in the collection.  And then, I had an early morning work day in Culver City, I was walking to my job, passed a dumpster in front of a thrift shop, filled with stuff that was so worthless it was being tossed, and there they were, old photos.  Some were so far down in the bin I wasn't willing to go diving, some were damaged beyond use, and some were covered in slime so vile even I wasn't willing to clean them off, and I have a pretty strong stomach.   Anyway, this one is the first of the lot.  I'll be putting them up, without interruption, so it's probably not necessary, but they'll all be tagged Culver City Trash Collection in labels.  

The Waterbury Paper Box Co. Wedding Album 34

And with this one, this album is done.  But why is what appears to be the oldest photo in the album on the last page?  If only someone had captioned the photographs.

Click on Waterbury Box Co. Album in labels to see the now complete lot, in order.

The Waterbury Paper Box Co. Wedding Album 22

There are still more wedding photos to come, but there won't be any in this lot that I'll be putting up.  Take a look at the two faces, they're clearly related.  Most likely mother and son.

Click on Waterbury Co. Album in labels to see other pages.

Four Generations

Written on the back, "Great Gran Ina & Grandpa Forues, Grandma Sinclair, Aunt Ruth & Adelaide Sinclair."  And yes, I did look up the Forues name, and it's the real deal.

Now, my best guess is that this photo was taken at the end of the nineteenth century or the very early years of the twentieth.  That means, the Great Gran Ina, Grandpa Forues, and Grandma Sinclair were alive during the Civil War, and Ina, as a young child, probably listened to stories about the American Revolution from people who were there.  And, young Adelaide probably lived through World War 1, World War 2,  and maybe even Vietnam.

Too Many Twins

One, two, three sets of twins.  Perhaps, one set of fraternal twins as well.  Let's hope that twins ran in this family, and there are a few cousins going on here.  I know there are women out there who are still having ten or more children, but the era of really big families seems to be fading.  It's just too expensive to raise large families these days, and most women want lives that go beyond full time, multi-decade child rearing.

One Big Happy Family

I don't know about other collectors of old photos, but I always have doubts about what I'm told by the people who sell them.  When I get a lot like this, I ask if all the photos are from the same source.   The dealers, of course, can intuit that I'm interested in buying images from the same family, so they tell me that, of course, all the same big family.  I know that sometimes they're telling me the truth.  I also know that sometimes they're just telling me what they know I want to hear.  I think I see a family resemblance, and at least one man who's in two photos, but that could be wishful thinking.

eBay Portraits, the Faded and Damaged One

99 cents and a couple of bucks for shipping.  So, did I get my money's worth?  Had I found this one in a store, maybe $2.  Mostly because I like the weird headdress the little girl is wearing.  I suspect it's something ethnic, rather than a fashion statement.  Maybe a dollar for the one with tape and 50 cents for the damaged, mother daughter portrait.  And I would have probably passed on the reproduction.  On the other hand, I was in an antique mall this afternoon and bought ten snapshots for $5, all of which I prefer to the four eBay portraits.  So, you pay your money and takes your chances, as the Carneys say.

The Pforzheim Album 13

The hidden picture.  A few posts ago I wrote that I had finished with the non real photo postcards.  I was wrong.  When I took out the top image for scanning, a wallet sized photo popped out.  Why was the second photo in this post hidden away?  I like the idea of some covert meaning, but the probable answer...It was too small to fit in the album pages mounts.  There is a photographer's stamp on the back.  "JOS. FIRNKES FOTOGRAF LAHR I. BAD.  KAISERSTRASSE 69"  Of course, when this photo was taken, the Kaiser was long gone.  Part of the treaty that ended World War 1.  In the group photo, take a close look.  They posed in the mud.

The Pforzheim Album 11

There's always a lot of speculation when I post these old photos.  I've speculated that the owner of this album was from Pforzheim, Germany because the first two photos in the album, in a place of prominence,  were from Pforzheim photographers, and because the only commercially produced postcard is of a Pforzheim landmark.

 But, there are a lot of towns associated with the images in the collection, two new ones in this post.  There's a photographers stamp on the back of the top photo.  "Photographie, G. Lampe, Baden-Baden, Ludwig Wilhelm, PL. 5"  Yet another town in Baden-Wurttemberg.  For those who can't make out the embossed credit on the bottom card, "Eder & Sohn, Kempten i. Allg"  Kempten is in the Allgau region of southwest Bavaria, near the Baden-Wurttemburg border.  It's also the oldest urban settlement in Germany, known to have been inhabited as early as 50 B.C.

Of course, there's a lot more to wonder about than where the owner of this album actually lived.  I don't know about anyone else, but every time I see photos from Germany taken in the years before World War 2, I wonder what the people in those photos believed.  Going on the assumption that all the photos in the album were taken in the late twenties, the little boy in the baby carriage, almost certainly,  became a member of the Hitler Youth.  But was he a loyal follower of the Fuhrer, or did he go along to get along?  The small boy in the lower photo would have been the right age to fight in the war.  Was he army, navy, a flier, the S.S.?   Did he survive?  And if he survived, did he go back to an ordinary life, or was he tried as a war criminal?

I'm not going to try and translate the handwriting on the back of the top postcard, but the name Huck makes another appearance.  This time Josef.  Baby or father?  Perhaps a native German speaker can let us know.

The Pforzheim Album 10

There's an embossed  logo on the bottom of the first image.  I couldn't make out the photographer's name, but I was able to figure out (I think.) the town name.  The only thing that gives me doubt is that Meiringer is not in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, like the other communities I've run across in this album.  It's  in Switzerland.

 Meiringer's claim to fame is it's proximity to the Reichenbach Falls, known to Sherlock Holmes fans as the place chosen by Arthur Conan Doyle to kill off the famous detective in The Adventure of the Final Problem.  Poor Doyle, he hated Holmes, but after the failure of what he considered his serious work, a series of Medieval romance novels, he was forced to resurrect Sherlock Holmes.  As a Holmes fan, I'm pleased.

The second image is the second of two snapshots in the album.

Fast Times

What a pair.  The old guy, so proud of his beer, and dark beer at that.  And the little girl, no doubt a grand daughter, poised to pedal away once the proud parent, and somewhat embarrassed child, can work that damn camera.  Please don't let our precious little girl grow up to be a drunkard like dear old dad.

Written on the back, "At Dax Garage."

Coloring Within the Lines

By the time I started my photo lab career, hand coloring photographs was no longer a required skill.  It's kind of a pity.  A well done tint job has a technicolor, candy box feel that's so different from an actual color print.  And let's face it, it never hurts to have another way of seeing the world.  Anyway, someone was practicing with these four snapshots.  I hope they got better.  They couldn't have got much worse.

And for those interested, it's still possible to buy dyes used for hand tinting of black & white photographs.  Live in Los Angeles?  Freestyle Photographic Supply in Hollywood carries Faber-Castell oil pencils and Arista liquid oils.  Ink jet paper used for digital printing is different and needs to be treated with gesso, just like the canvases used for painting.  Of course, it has to be a clear acrylic gesso, since it goes over a printed image.  And no, I don't work for Freestyle or get a kickback.  I buy my film, chemicals, printing paper, and the occasional Holga there.

I like the foreshortened, man hands effect on the third print.