It looks like some photographer is chasing a couple of women down the street. Of course, more than likely, the cameraman knows his female subjects. I always search the background of photos for clues as to where and when the picture was taken, but no such luck here. I suppose I could try to match hairstyles and clothes to an era, but I don't feel like doing the research. Let's take a guess of the 1930s to 1940s. Is that the photographer's thumb in the bottom photo?
No, I haven't lost interest in this blog. As I mentioned a few posts ago, money is tight right now, so I'm not buying a lot of old photos. It's not that the actual photographs are all that expensive, but I buy a lot of my images at antique stores I pass on my way out of L.A., and I just can't afford to travel right now. So, rather than letting things go too long, I'm returning to this small collection of true-found photographs. Literally, I found them on the street. A couple of these are dated "July 1989" so I'm going to assume they are all from the same year, if not the same month. We've got some stylish young Germans in the top photo, and a couple of snapshots with murals painted on the walls. I've speculated about this in an earlier post. Much of Hamburg was destroyed in World War 2, and I was wondering if Hamburg was trying to evoke its past. And what's with the out-of-focus photo of a photo hanging on the wall? A relative, perhaps. Click on Hamburg Vacation Collection in labels to see more.
A brief return to a collection of true found photographs, literally found on the street. Anyway, it looks like the interior of a Hamburg restaurant. None of these photos have anything written on them, but a photo from an earlier post was dated 1989, so I'm sure these are from that year as well. Click on Hamburg Vacation Collection in labels to see everything that's been posted. Lots more to come, but there will be a bit of a wait.
This is another of those throw-in photos that I end up with when I buy an envelope of photos and get a few that I'd never buy individually. Anyway, as a former professional black & white printer it interests me a bit. There's clearly detail in the subject's uniform and face, but whoever printed this didn't expose for what's really important.
Time to finish up this small collection. To recap, I bought a small envelope of photos from an eBay seller in Japan. Do they all come from the same source, or are they just a bunch of random snapshots packaged together? Anyway, I didn't see any people showing up in multiple images, so I'm going with random. This is the one thing I keep wondering. How many of these photos were taken before the war, and how many after. Considering how many Japanese citizens died in the war, it's likely that at least some of the pre-war photos show people who were dead within four or five years. And a lot of people in these photos are pretty young. The bottom photo in the column is of schoolgirls. Click on Random Japanese Snapshots Collection in labels to see all the photos in the collection.
This post is just the other side of the album page that I just put up. The last post was frolicking in the ocean at Acapulco. This one is ruins, ruins, and more ruins at Uxmal, an ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico. And by the way, there is a misspelling in the caption. It should be a corbeled arch, not "korbeled." So, to see more click on The Trips Collection in labels to see what's been posted. And by the way, there are a lot of pages in this album, so it will be a while before the whole album will be online.
Back to the trips album that I actually found in the garbage. A few years ago, my computer died, and while the scanner wasn't affected, I lost the software and it was too old, so the manufacturer wasn't supporting it anymore, so there went the color correction setting. Too bad, I'd love to see these photos closer to what they looked like when they came from the photo lab. Anyway, a collection of family vacation photos from multiple locations and multiple years. These are all from Mexico, and it looks like they drove from Los Angeles. Well probably, since that's where I found the album. Click on The Trips Collection in labels to see everything that's been posted.
I don't have an exact date when this photo was taken, but it looks like it's probably from the late forties through the early fifties, those years after World War 2 when all people wanted to do was embrace the ordinary. And why wouldn't they.
This is probably the penultimate post from this collection. To recap, I bought an envelope of snapshots from an eBay seller in Japan. I have no idea if the photos are from the same source, or if the seller just threw a bunch of random snapshots together into a single lot. Anyway, click on Random Japanese Snapshots Collection in labels to see the rest.
It always seems like Long Beach is looking for another tourist attraction. Right now, it's the Queen Mary and the Long Beach Aquarium, which I admit, is pretty impressive. So, in 1931 it was the Rainbow Pier. It was a rainbow-shaped fishing pier, 3800 feet long, with a roadway on the top that allowed cars to drive over the Pacific Ocean. Eventually, rotting pilings and storm damage made repairs prohibitively expensive so the Rainbow Pier became the Rainbow Lagoon after a hell of a lot of rock and dirt was dumped where the pier once was. This card was once pasted into a photo album, so most of the back is covered in black construction paper. I can't make out any of the written message, just a few letters that were exposed when it was removed from the album. I can make out part of the postmark, so it was mailed. Dated, 1937.
Old Los Angeles. Well, sort of. Actually, it's Beverly Hills and while somewhat smaller, this building is still there. Many years ago, I worked nearby and used to walk down there on my lunch hour and buy a snack. Anyway, I found some information to pass along, but not as much as I'd like. I know the store opened in 1947, but I couldn't find the name of the architect. I know the building was commissioned by Justin Dart, the CEO of Rexall Drugs, and that it wasn't just the world's largest drug store, but also the headquarters for the company. Today, it's a CVS and Target. The caption on the back of the card, "World Headquarters, REXALL DRUG COMPANY, Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA." It was published by "WESTERN PUBLISHING & NOVELTY CO., LOS ANGELES, CALIF." This card was never mailed.
A quick turnaround for part 2, but after this one., there will be a bit of a break before I post more from this collection. The top photo looks like it's probably a private home, perhaps a German relative's house of the vacationers. Written on the back, and the only photo with any notation, "6 JULY 1989." I know that a large portion of Hamburg was destroyed during World War 2, which makes me wonder if the modern buildings of Hamburg were painted to give a medieval feel to a rebuilt city. Click on the Hamburg Vacation Collection in labels to see the rest of the lot. At least once I get around to putting them all up on the site.
I've mentioned this before. If I were being completely honest, this blog would be called the recently purchased photography since almost all of the photos I post are bought in antique stores, thrift stores, flea markets, and online. Every once in a while, I actually find photos, and these are some of them. This afternoon I took a walk to Hollywood and found envelopes of color negatives and fifty-plus prints, just lying on the street. In total, there were six envelopes, and each one contained a processed roll of Kodak Gold color film, all 36 exposures. Not every frame had an image, but the prints I found don't add up, so I didn't get every photo from these images printed in Hamburg, Germany. It's possible that some Germans moved to L.A., but I think it's more likely that they are vacation pictures. Too, a couple of the photos I found have a date written on the back, "July 1989." Anyway, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to post these images, most likely five per post, but that's not a final, set-in-stone decision. Click on the Hamburg Vacation Collection to see future posts. And what's really weird, about a mile further down the street I found some transparencies, but since the scanner I own doesn't scan slides or negatives, they may never get posted. It's nice to know that Germans use the same type of urinals we do in the U.S.
And no, I don't consider the Seoul Series between the Dodgers and Padres in South Korea to be opening day. And no, I haven't started collecting baseball cards. Not enough space, not enough money. I walked to the store, this afternoon, and there were some baseball cards on the street, and since I grew up fifty miles from downtown Pittsburgh, and I'm a lifetime Pirates fan, I picked this one up. So, Pittsburgh 6, Miami 5 in 12 innings. Henry Davis, who plays both outfield and catcher and he caught today, went 1 for 6. Go Bucs.
This is another one of those throw-in photos I get when I buy envelopes of old photographs. There are always a few that I'd never buy as a stand-alone purchase, but I end up with them as part of a lot. Anyway, I noticed that there is a piece of paper on the desk he's leaning against that is headlined, "STRAND." I thought it might be a hotel room service menu, and there are a lot of Strand Hotels out there, so it's a possibility. Far more Strand Hotels than I expected. Dated "NOV 67."
As a rule, I don't publish text-only posts, but this is an exception. Over time, I'll be putting up this entire album, and since the lady who put this album together typed out these four pages of reminiscences of her trip to Mexico, well here it is. And by the way, I didn't crop out some of her text. There are a couple of lines where she typed beyond the edge of the page. Click on The Trips Collection in labels to see everything that has been posted and will be posted in the future. That is if my scanner doesn't die again.
I'm still having problems with the scanner, so when it started working again, I figured I should get something posted while I still could. So, a photo plus what's written on the back from an envelope of photos I purchased from an eBay seller in Japan. And once again, if anyone out there can translate what's written on the back of the print, please leave it as a comment. Click on random Japanese snapshots collection in labels to see what's already been published.
I don't walk by there all that often, but about an hour's stroll from my apartment, there is a store that has a rack of advertising postcards that I sometimes look at just to see if there's anything that I'd like to add to my ever-growing collection of ephemera. Anyway, I liked the photo of the old Nagra tape recorder, so I scarfed this one up and brought it home. Because I didn't want to do free advertising for an event, I decided to hold onto it until after it was over. And no, I didn't go, though I would have liked to. Who doesn't love The Beatles?
I don't often have enough to go on to research my photos, but every once in a while. Take a look at the top of the print, and the name "HERMANN TIETZ" can be seen. Hermann Tietz was a German-Jewish businessman. He was born in 1837 and died in 1907. He and his brothers, Oskar, and Leonard founded a chain of department stores in Germany. In 1900, the largest store in the chain was opened in Berlin. In 1934, all Tietz holdings, both department stores and factories were Aryanized and a forced sale was made to rival Georg Karg, who rebranded the stores as Hertie Department Stores.
The words (at least the second and third word) on the bus in the foreground translate as
Stranger Tours. Special tours for first-time visitors to Berlin, perhaps.
