Mountain Home

This was almost certainly made for someone's personal use, nevertheless, there is a commercial photographer's credit line on the back.  "Milton Helm's Studio, Mountain Home, Idaho."  I couldn't find much about Helm, but a bit.  I know that in 1907 he was a partner in a photo studio in Twin Falls, with Leah Amos, Idaho's preeminent woman photographer, or at leas that's how she was described in  an article about photographer's in Idaho.  The next year Helm moved to Mountain Home and opened his own studio.  I know he was active in 1917.  I found a mention of him in a newspaper that had an ad for Civilization, a silent movie directed Thomas H. Ince, and released that year.  And I found another mention of him from Abel's Photographic Weekly from 1922.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of his photographs.  Type in Milton Helm Mountain home and all the pictures that come up are from Levon Helm's  recording studio.  Oh well.

The Young Communist

Al I know about this guy is that he seems to be embracing the Lenin look, albeit with a full head of hair.  A real photo postcard.

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 20

Done.  The Bulgarian school boys (and girls) have come to an end.   As I noted in an earlier post, I bought this album from an eBay seller in Bulgaria who told me that these photos showed school uniforms.  With the passage of time, some of those school uniforms got traded in for military uniforms, but there was a war going on and more than likely the young men in this collection didn't have much choice in the matter.  Making out the dates on the backs of these images was pretty easy but I didn't do as well with the writing.  When I was growing up I was a paperboy.  Does that job even exist anymore?  Anyway, some of my customers were elderly Russians who had come to the United States, after the revolution, and worked in the local coal mines.  I picked up a bit of the language from them.  I can't remember much anymore, but I can still make out the Cyrillic alphabet.  I thought about spelling the words out phonetically and running them through Google translate, but when I realized that I had trouble deciphering the actual handwriting, I gave up, so if there are any native Bulgarian speakers who would like to help me out, I'd appreciate it.  Anyway,  Stara Zagora was easy, and I'm fairly certain that the girl on this page is named Ivanka, but that's as far as I'll go on this page.  I hope they all survived the war and the post war dictatorships. 

As usual, click on The Bulgarian School Boy Album in the labels section at the bottom of the post.  It's now possible to see the whole album, from front to back.

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 19

The penultimate Bulgarian School Boy Album page!  Some of the earliest photos from this album are dated from the mid 1930's.  So, are the men in the top photo the school boys from those pictures?  If those students were in their mid to late teens in those pictures, they'd be pushing thirty after the war was over.  Is the woman in the second photo a school girl from of those pictures a mother by 1946?  Well, there's nothing written on the back of that photo, so we can't know when it was taken. 

Click on The Bulgarian School Boy Album in labels to see other album pages.

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 18

 

There's nothing written on the back of the bottom photo, but I suspect it's a family photo.  Once again from Stara Zagora.  Click on The Bulgarian School boy Album in labels to see more. 

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 17

The top photo had exactly one thing on the back, "VII", too vague to scan.   It's the second photo that's more interesting to me.  1943, Bulgaria is in the war and ruled by a Fascist, right wing government allied with the Germans.  Still, people walk the streets and seem pretty happy.  At the beginning of the war, Bulgaria embraced neutrality, but they found themselves on an invasion route to Yugoslavian and Greece.  There was some fighting in Bulgaria, some of it involving a native resistance movement.  Sadly for the Bulgarians they were over run by the Soviets near the end of World War 2.  It's never a good thing to be between two warring factions.

Click on The Bulgarian School Boy Album in labels to see more from the collection.

The Bulgarian School Boy Album 16

I've been on a bit of a vacation, and yes I did add a few more photos to the collection, but before I start in on those, it's time to finish The Bulgarian School Boy Album.  (Click on in labels to see more.) 

It looks like this album was put together after the fact, rather than as the pictures were taken.  There are dates ranging from the mid thirties into the mid forties.  1936 and 1939 on this page.