Don't Forget the Dog

  

Written on the back, "July 1952  Ruth, Clint & David, Clint's son."  A farm family?  Perhaps a house right on the edge of the new, post-war subdivision?  Was Clint a widower or divorced? 

Our Chickens

 

A very faded real photo postcard.  A nice farm family posing next to their chicken coop.  

Grandpa's Lady

The weird world of real photo postcards.  For those of you who can't read sideways, it says, "Calls herself grandpa's lady."  That is the strangest hat I've ever seen on a child.  At first I thought she was standing in front of something, but after blowing it up, no, it's just the hat.

200,000

Sometime during the wee hours of this morning, The New Found Photography went over 200,000 unique page views.  These three photographs started things off.  I found the original glass negatives at an antique store in Washington state.  The seller had picked up hundreds of negatives from an estate sale in Montana, and decided to sell them off individually.  By the time I found these, the collection had been pretty much picked over.  I think it's the  dream of every photo collector to find a secret cache of photos from an unknown, yet talented photographer.  Sadly, with this lot broken up, and sold off,  we'll never know what the complete archive had to offer.

Oh, and I hand printed them back when I was still working in a photo lab.

The Here, There, and Everywhere Collection-The One With Ducks on the Back

Over the years I've expressed my displeasure with antique dealers who cut up photo albums.  On this one, the seller artfully cut out the gardener photo, but sliced part of the duck photo off.   I like ducks.

Click on The Here There and Everywhere Collection in labels to see other photos and get more information on the collection.

Roll Out The Barrel

Big Barrel or small woman?

Really Big Horses

Written on  the back, "Claude, Frank, Earl, Wilby."  Got to admit it, love the last name.  Anyway, don't know anything about horses, but I do know that there was an age when horses were working animals, pulling wagons and farm machinery.  So, Clydesdales, Percherons, or some other breed?  They all look the same to me.

Eating Watermelon

I grew up in a small, rural town where people, during the summer, sat around and ate watermelon.  Locally grown watermelon.  Watermelon with seeds.  Imagine that.

Farm Women

Every so often I'll buy a collection of random, unrelated photographs.  When I pulled this one out of the envelope I thought, "Well, they can't all be worth the money."  But, as time passed, I began to like this image. I wonder about the woman with the styled hair.  Did she think of herself as trapped?  Did she dream of the city?  She seems so out of place in this photograph.  

The Severe Family

Did this family ever laugh?  If they were asked to smile for the camera, they failed.  There is a very faded stamp on the back.  I can't make out all of it, but I've got "ROLLINS STUDIO" and "SEDALIA."  Presumably Sedalia, Missouri.  I suspect Mr. Rollins did the processing and printing rather than taking the picture.

Moo Two, Too Many Cattle

The third photo in the column looks like it could be a 4H auction.  For those unfamiliar with the 4H, it's a national youth group for farm kids.  I wasn't in the 4H, but I did grow up in a small, rural town, with lots of farm kids in our school.  One of the assignments most 4H kids had was to raise a cow or a pig and then sell them at auction.  I always wondered how they could do it.  New born calf or piglet, raised almost from birth.  There had to be some sort of emotional attachment, and it must have been hard to send that animal off to another owner, or even to slaughter.  That's part of the deal of being a farmer, they were raised to it, and I guess that's what got them through.

Moo

Someone loved his cattle.

Farm Kids

And the one room schoolhouse to the right.  From the 1920s, going by the haircuts on the little girls.  Stamped on the back, "SUPERIOR Photo Service, Waterloo, Iowa."

The Army Hospital Album 25

There's an American Gothic crossed with John Steinbeck quality to the first two photos.  And it looks like central valley orchards.

Click on army hospital album in labels to bring up the lot.