A Creepy Cabinet Card

Take a close look at the second girl on the left.  Her eyes seem, at least to me, to be kind of lifeless.  Too, it looks like she's being held up by the rest of her family.  The child on her left is holding on to the dress, meanwhile we can see a hand on her right that looks well placed to hold the child upright.  In the nineteenth century, a time of high childhood mortality, a rather creepy photographic service was being offered; photo portraits with the dead kids.  There's no way it can be proved, but I think second on the left was dead when this picture was taken.

There's nothing on the back of the card, and the slight impression on the card front doesn't really scan.  It's difficult to see, but I was able to make out Ottawa, Kansas.  The photographer's name, however, well, I'm not really sure.  I think it's C Wain, though maybe not.

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.