The only reason I bought this Cabinet Card is because I grew up an hour's drive or so from Altoona, Pennsylvania. I'm also fascinated by how photos travel. I bought it in Los Angeles County, a long, long way from Altoona. I couldn't find much about Howard's Photos except that it was a successful photo studio in the late 19th and early 20th century.
I buy a fair number of photos as lots. I'll buy an envelope, usually to get two or three prints, and while many of them are interesting, I wouldn't buy them as a stand-alone purchase. Anyway, I have a few faded prints that have been sitting in boxes, and not in the queue for publication. What fascinates me about fading prints is the symbolism of people and history disappearing in plain sight.
As a former professional black & white photo printer, I can say that black marks on a print are where white light is getting through the negative, and white is where light is being blocked. It looks like there were some slashes in the negative's emulsion, and the white part on the "4" and that squiggly white line below the other black slash is where bits of the emulsion is still attached to the neg, just not where it should be.
It occurs to me that there are those out there who don't understand old-fashioned film photography. That bar at the top of the print is where the film didn't advance far enough in the camera.
This slim photo has been cut down from a larger photo. There is some writing on the back, but like the picture itself, some of it has been lost to the scissors. "Dec. 20/4." So, from the 1940s. And, "Taken in Ge." Perhaps Germany and a soldier on occupation duty. Or, then again, maybe Georgia, though there isn't that much snow in Georgia.
It doesn't look like much of a photo, but if you think about it, it's kind of fascinating. The clothes look like post-World War 2, a time when returning veterans were taking out GI loans and building homes of their own, and it looks like a house under construction on an undeveloped lot.
It's been so hot out just lately, that I thought I'd put something up that's a reminder of winter and cold weather. Anyway, I'm thinking that these two are on a glacier rather than a snow-covered mountain. There's something written on the back of the print that I think is "Hilie n o Larff." with a line over the "O." I think they are names, but just in case I ran it through Google Translate which came up as Icelandic detected but offered no actual translation.
I haven't lost interest in this blog, nor have I stopped collecting old photos, but I have been very short of money for a while, hence the big gaps in posts. Anyway, there's a Christmas tree in the background, and we are about three weeks out, so I thought I put this picture up.
Written on the back, "Palm Springs 1946." The man looks like he's about the right age to have been a World War 2 veteran, and Palm Springs would have been a nice place for a romantic reunion after being released from service. Before blowing up the print, I actually thought he was wearing a military uniform, but now I don't think so.
There was a time when many people carried family pictures around in their wallets. The type of photo labs that I used to work in was more about large industrial accounts, but all of them did a certain amount of over-the-counter personal work. Anyway, we had this very old, beat-up wallet-size easel that we used so little, that sometimes it would get shoved away in some corner, and when we had to make a wallet-sized print like this shot of Veda and Campbell, we'd have to go searching for the thing.
There's some Italian writing on the back of the print and after running it through Google Translate, I've come up with a meaning, though there was one word I had trouble working out. So, after trying dozens of possibilities, I'm going with the only wording that makes sense. "Jo and Lucy collect the balls and Tesy on the porch takes them." Bocci ball? It's like lawn bowling. I grew up in a small rural town that had an Italian-American Club that was about a hundred or so yards from my back door. The old men who always seemed to have a game going would chase me away when I stopped to watch.
It looks like this poor guy is all set for a lazy day on the back porch, but his wife, purse in hand, is ready to go. Dated, "OCT 1958"
It looks like they've got a mountain cabin somewhere. All conifers, a sure sign of a more western local. I didn't notice it until I scanned and enlarged the top photo, but she's smoking. Apart from the health issues, not a good idea in our modern dry, drought stricken world. Too, when I saw the bottom photo, I thought the man's arms were crossed. After scanning and seeing it in a bigger window, it looks like he's holding her legs.
