Daguerreotype. No date.

Dangerous Work

Thomas Tatum Greenwood, about 1833

A somber daguerreotype (is there any other kind?) dated 1833. Which predates Louis Daguerre's announcement of the daguerreotype by 6 years or so, so it's probably not very accurate. This guy looks like Edgar Allan Poe to me, or rather what I imagine EAP would look like had he not actually been photographed, I'm not sure why. And I like his tie.

Daguerreotypes are fun!

Paul

We went PanAm, back United.

1950

One of my favorite portraits of the set. She looks so contemporary, aside from her dress. This scan hardly does this print justice. It's beautifully preserved with a very wide tonal range and a slightly warm tone. I think it's a platinum print but I'm not sure.

Too close to home...

This "characteristic pose" of Lorraine Rhodes was taken in Kingport Tennessee in 1918.

These two images are a set as far as I'm concerned. These are my mother's mother's parents. The top image has the following written on the back: back reads: "To my dear Kathryn, John & Jane. Easter 1931. Age 73". A very sweet Easter gift.




The second has written: back reads: "Mother (Ida Moore Morris) Dec. 1928 age 70".




These two images really embody the popular style of the time. Very reminiscent of Hollywood publicity photography, these images were surely shot on large format film and meticulously retouched by hand. That is what gives them the soft, luminescent quality in the skin.

A quick note...

I'm not sure what I'm doing here other than sharing my collection of vintage photography. The images that interest me the most are the ones that embody a strong sense of history or mystery. The history part might be in the dress or actions or surroundings pictured or it might be the photograph itself, the object or process used to get the image on paper (or glass or whatever). The mystery part is in the content of the image. I don't write well about photography so I will try to avoid long discourse on the imagery and I'm not very good at identifying print types either. When I can I will give some history about the image as an object (what kind of print it is) and about the content of the image. That's all. We'll see where it goes.

A stern looking bunch.

My grandmother is second from the right. She and the boy in the center sort of look like they're in trouble.

Cowboy

One of my favorite images from my collection. The dusty, dirty mood and lone cowboy standing guard over his ramshackle kingdom. A stalwart sentinel, a modern sphinx waiting for the answers to his riddle.

I don't know anything about this picture. There is no date or information written and I have no idea where or who it came from. Is this guy a relative? A great uncle who decided to move west from Milwaukee to find his fortune but got stuck somewhere in the plains where he settled in a clapboard shed where he spent his days smoking a pipe and keeping watch for indians or simply other passers by. Or just someone along the side of the road who made a good model due to his arch-typical western nature?

The mystery is what makes it so interesting to me.