The Pianist

There's a stamp on the back of this one, "PHOTO BY JAS. ABRESCH, 200 WEST 57th ST., N.Y.C."  I did a quick search and found an autographed picture of Bruna Castanga, an Italian opera singer, dated 1936, with the same stamp.   Perhaps Mr. Abresch specialized in classical musicians, possibly not.  At least 1936 gives us a clue to when he was active.  No idea who the lady is.

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 33

Well if nothing else, this guy qualifies as dapper.

Click on Waterbury Box Co. Album in labels to see the rest.

The Waterbury Paper Box Co. Wedding Album 32

This one's odd because it's so clearly from a different era than most of the other photos.  And why so many wedding photos?

Click on Waterbury  Box Co. Album in the labels section at the bottom of the post to see the rest.  Only two more to go.

The Waterbury Paper Box Co. Wedding Album 31

Another Girl's Club costume party, but this time the photographer had a few problems with his (or her) lighting.  I wrote his because at the time this photo was taken a professional photographer would almost certainly have been male.  But then again, it was a girl's club, so maybe the effort was made to find a woman photographer.

As always, click on Waterbury  Box Co. Album in labels to see the album, in order.

The Waterbury Paper Box Co. Wedding Album 30

It's time to start the final push on the Waterbury photo album.  There are five more pages to go, and I won't take any more breaks until they're all posted.  Not every photo in the album is a wedding photo, but it seems right that this final sequence starts with a bride.

Click on Waterbury Box Co. Album in labels to see the lot.

Views of the World, Canal, Amsterdam, Holland

Think Holland and you think canals or tulips.  I suspect it would have been too hard for some poor colorist to go in and do thousands of tulips.

I'll return to more postcards from this collection in about a month,give or take.  In the mean time, click on Views of the World in labels at the bottom of the post to see more.

Views of the World, Falls of the Rhine, Switzerland

The Falls of the Rhine, the upper Rhine, is near the town of Schaffausen,Switzerland.  It's 450 feet wide, 75 feet wide, and the highest plain falls in Europe.  Now I have no idea what a plain falls is.  I tried looking it up, and believe it or not, I didn't find an answer.  Of course, I only scrolled back through the first four pages of the Google search.  Not very ambitious, but hey, I was just too lazy to keep searching.

Click on Views of the World in labels to see more cards from this collection.

Views of the World, Cologne Cathedral, Germany

The postcards in this series were made for the American market, and I have to wonder, when  people looked at these cards, did it make them want to travel and see the real thing, or did they say, "Hey, I've seen a picture, that's good enough."

Construction began on Cologne Cathedral in 1248, and was abandoned in 1473.  Construction resumed in the nineteenth century and was completed 1880.  During World War 2, the Cathedral was hit, by bombs, fourteen times.  Repairs began as early as 1944 and those repairs were completed in 1956.  In 2007, a new stained glass window was installed.  It was designed by German artist Gerhard Richter, whose work spans  pure abstraction to photo-realism.

Click on Views of the World to see other cards in the series.

Views of the World, Castle On The Rhine, Germany

It's time to return to The Views of the World Collection which can be accessed by clicking on, yes you've guessed  it, Views of the World in the labels section at the bottom of the post.

I thought it would be easy to identify this particular castle, and was surprised that there were several candidates.  My best guess, Rheinstein Castle, built in 1317 and currently owned by the Hecher family.

Seafood At The Hotel

Just three people standing in front of a hotel where seafood is served.   Dated ""AUG 17, 1952"

Flying Fish

These could have been taken anywhere with palm trees, but I'm betting on Florida.  After all, that was, and still is, the retirement dream for a lot of Americans.  Love the hats in the first photo.  Dated "APR 71"

Smooth College Boy

That's one of the great stereotypes of  silent movies of the Jazz Age.  The smooth college boy who seduces the innocent girl while the stalwart hero pines for his wayward lady love.  Of course, in the end true love conquers all.

Leo Rosenthal, Photographer 5

The last of the Leo Rosenthal photographs.

Leo Rosenthal, Photographer 4

A heated discussion at the U.N?  As I noted in an earlier post, I'm just pulling these out of the envelope at random.  When I started deciphering the captions, I saw that they have been written by one of the subjects in the second photo, so my apologies to Leo Rosenthal for my criticisms of his hand writing.  And, for some reason I don't understand, bits to the right of the horizontal images seem to be cut off, but click, bring it up in a larger window, and the whole width of the image becomes visible.  That's important on the last one in the column, since some of the writing can't be seen except in a separate window.

Leo Rosenthal, Photographer 3

Once again I'm posting the backs of the prints because I'm baffled by Leo Rosenthal's handwriting.  I can make out Carnegie House.  I did a search on that and found a rather expensive apartment house in Manhattan.  My guess is that the Carnegie House mentioned is actually the Carnegie Mansion, now owned by The Smithsonian, current home of The Cooper-Hewitt Museum Design Center.

Anyway, I'm just pulling pictures out of the envelope, and posting them as they come, so there's no attempt to bunch them in any order.

Leo Rosenthal, Photographer 2

The Leo Rosenthal collection continues, and they have captions.  The problem is, some of those captions are readable, and others not,  at least not by me, so I'll be doing something I don't usually don't, scan the backs and leave it to the viewers.  Is it me?  Are there two different sets of hand writing on the top print?  Remember, click on an image to bring it up in a bigger window.  

Leo Rosenthal, Photographer 1

Over the years, I've picked up a couple of collections of news photos, and over the next few days, I'll be posting one of those lots.

These are all photos by Leo Rosenthal, a photographer who led, to put it mildly, an interesting life.  I found an article about his life in a newspaper from 1968,  that listed his age as 83, so that puts 1885 as the year of his birth.  His father was a jeweler in Riga, Latvia, at the time part of the Russian Empire.  Leo went on to become a criminal lawyer, practicing in Moscow through two different revolutions.  He was part of the Kerensky government as head of The Bureau of Released Prisoners.  Under the Bolsheviks, he was The Executive Secretary of The Political Red Cross and was also a defense attorney for The Revolutionary Tribunals and latter The People's Court.  In 1919, attorneys became employees of the state, and a year latter, Leo Rosenthal moved to Berlin.

In 1922 he began his journalistic career as a reporter and photographer for Vorwarts the official newspaper of The German Social Democratic Party.  In 1934, the Nazi government banned Jews from working as journalists, so Rosenthal moved onto Paris, working as a correspondent for a number of Scandinavian based labor newspapers.  In 1940, the day before the Germans marched into Paris, he fled south to Vichy and continued his work as a journalist.  In 1942, his mother, brother, and three sisters were killed, in Riga, by the Nazis.  He fled to the United States, living in New York City.  To support himself, he stuffed dolls, worked as an artist's model, and was the assistant librarian at Rikers Island  Prison.  Eventually, he returned to photojournalism as a free-lance.  In 1945, he covered the United Nations Organization Conference in San Francisco,  and after the U.N. set up in New York City, he spent the rest of his career there.

Leo Rosenthal took more than 300,000 pictures during his years at the U.N.  In 1968, The United Nations Association of the United States sponsored an exhibition of his work, displaying more than 600 of his photos.  A book of his photos from Germany, "Leo Rosenthal, Ein Chronist in der Weimarer Republik, Fotografien 1926-1933" is available from Amazon.

All of these photos have the same stamp on the back. "PHOTO BY LEO ROSENTHAL, 315 WEST 102nd STREET, NEW YORK 25, N.Y.-TEL. UN.4-0893, PRIVATE PRINT--NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNLESS BY SPECIAL PERMISSION."  Labeled, "United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 10th session, February, March 1954."

1947

I've always maintained that part of the fun in collecting old snapshots is speculation.  This one's dated "March 15 1947."   So, three years earlier, was she in Manzanar?