I just picked this photo up today, and I figured I'd better get it posted as soon as possible. It's small, really small. 1.25 x 2 inches, and I need to get it into the storage box before I lose it. Anyway, I don't know what to make of it. Clearly, it's from before the age of the photo booth. It could be a contact or reduction print. I'm not aware of any film this small manufactured in the 19th or very early 20th century.
A fascinating face, indeed. There's something a bit masculine in her visage. The chin and brow line seem more male to me than female. I know I'm probably wrong, but I think there is a slight chance that this woman is actually a man. I spent decades working in photo labs and one of the things that I learned is that if people can think, they'll do it and take pictures, and a lot of men think about wearing women's clothes. But what about when this picture was taken. I started my lab career after the invention of the Polaroid camera and worked into the digital age granting a certain amount of anonymity to those men wanted to wear a dress. Did professional studio photographers of the nineteenth century have special times to take photos of special customers? Probably.
There are a lot of photos out there of men in uniform. From the clothing, my best guess is that this photo was taken around the late 1920s to early 1930s. Did this young sailor hope for deployment in Hawaii or the Philippines? Plum assignments before the Japanese attacks that brought the United States into World War 2.
Was it Sunday and off to church, or was this the way she usually dressed?
Who are the two people overlooking the well-dressed trio? The woman on the left is gazing off into the distance. What was so interesting that she didn't look into the camera?
I'd love to know where this picture was taken and what it took for these two ladies to get there, dressed as they are. The woman on the left is wearing a veil, at least when it's blown up, you can see netting over her face. And the woman on the right is holding a folding camera.
This photo was once pasted into a photo album. There's a bit of a word sticking out from under black construction paper, but when I tried to peel it back I was beginning to damage the print, and I thought the print was more important than a single word. "Vaien"
The guy on the right looks younger than the others, so I'm betting a family portrait rather than dating couples. But what are they standing by? It looks like some sort of excavation.
If you are a fan of silent movies, you've probably seen a film where a family with a large car, drives around a city, and don't do much of anything but run over things, and generally causes a major mess. It's hard to believe, but when those films were made, very few Americans actually owned a car, and those movies were as much about class as they were about cars. There's black construction paper on the backs of the prints, so at some point, they were cut out of a photo album. I thought about trying to peel the paper off and see if anything was written on the backs, but the risk of damaging the prints is too great.
I did a bit of research and found some information about Barney Seamon's Modern Clothing Store. In February 1917, Barney was liquidating his store. He had to retire due to ill health. There is something written on the back, "Out on the State road near Coffin Crops-the same day we stopped at Coffin's & returned to the gorge behind Aunt Min's." Well, I'm not sure about Coffin Crop's. It could be Coffee Drop's, or perhaps Coffin Drops. It's bad when someone has worse handwriting than me. There are over 150 waterfalls in the Ithica area, all with their very own gorge. I have no idea which one is behind Aunt Min's.
The guy facing the camera is the definition of an older dapper gentleman. The hat, the cane, the glasses. Just a great look.
