Portraits from the first 100 years of photography
This is my first post with photos from California. I don't know the names of the kids or the year the photo was taken. It was for sale together with another class photo that must have been taken a year or two earlier, because many of the same kids are in both photos (see below). ... Continue Reading →
Does anyone have any idea what this family is up to? The photo came to me from Oregon, but their clothing looks European. Also, the brick wall in the background looks very old. As in ancient. My guess would be that this family was in France or Belgium, but that's just a guess. The photo... Continue Reading →
March is Women’s History Month in the United States, and few professions have historically been as closely associated with women as nursing. Update, April 11, 2019: I made a significant error in the initial version of this post. When I first searched online for information related to the Montefiore Hospital School of Nursing, the only... Continue Reading →
This photograph has faded and lost some of its clarity, but it's a photo I'm very glad to have. It was taken on a wintry day in Exeter, New Hampshire, outside a shop owned by my great-great-grandfather, Ivan Tilton Purinton (1843-1904). Signs on the wall say "I. T. Purinton" and "Carriage & Sign Painter." Also... Continue Reading →
This cabinet card portrait was made at the studio of Sweet & Kinloch in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. A genealogy of the Sweet Family in the West of Scotland identifies one of the studio owners as Charles Sweet (1864-1945). Born in Glasgow, Charles opened his studio in Rothesay in 1889 with a younger partner,... Continue Reading →
The Soviet Union (USSR) formally came into existence on December 30, 1922, after three years of world war and five years of civil war. When this photo was taken, sometime in 1933, the country had existed a little more than ten years. On the back is the following note in Russian: Собрание уполномоченных артели "Кр.... Continue Reading →
This cabinet card came to me from Bath, England, but it has nothing written on it to give us a clue as to its origins. Two women stand protectively behind a third, who is seated in a wheelchair. The three resemble each other so closely that they must be sisters. Posed in a triangle, they... Continue Reading →
When I saw the carte-de-visite above, I wondered if it was a real scene or an elaborate joke. Could they really have sailed on ice? It turns out they could have! The sport is called ice yachting, and that's all I know about it. The guys to the left of the boat are skating and... Continue Reading →
This early cabinet card has no information on it, but we can make a few reasonable assumptions. The cabinet card format was introduced in London in 1863 and in the United States in 1866. The two boys lying on the ground are wearing dark blue hats of the type worn by Union soldiers during the... Continue Reading →
The first thing I noticed about this class photo was how stern all the boys look. That isn't exactly normal for a group of 29 little boys. Then I realized that no one is blinking or fidgeting, which is pretty amazing. Whatever the photographer said to them, it definitely got their attention. Another striking thing about... Continue Reading →
I completely made up the title of this post, so it probably isn't true at all, but it sounds like something you'd hear in an Irish ballad. This cabinet card portrait was made at the Lafayette studio in Dublin, founded by James Lafayette and his three brothers in 1880. Advertising on the back lists medals... Continue Reading →
One hundred and fifty-four years ago this week, seven friends sat for a portrait at Nathaniel L. Merrill's Photographic Gallery in Springfield, Vermont. They look young enough to be in high school, or perhaps recent graduates. The carte-de-visite photo has a revenue stamp on the back, affixed and cancelled by the photographer on December 22,... Continue Reading →
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