Portraits from the first 100 years of photography
This carte-de-visite may have been made at High Brooms Brick and Tile Company, founded in 1885 in Southborough, Kent, England. It's hard to tell what the father is sitting on, but we can see he's wearing gaiters of some sort below the knees, probably to keep his legs dry or clean. The photographer is identified on... Continue Reading →
Bostonia doesn't seem to exist anymore, if it ever really did. A stamp on the mat says "Halliday's Studio, Bostonia, ND." There was a post office on a farm there from 1908 to 1913, and Halliday's studio was probably also in a home, although the closest Halliday families I found in Census records were several... Continue Reading →
It was relatively rare for women in Britain and North America to set up their own commercial studios in the nineteenth century. In Scandinavia, in contrast, women seem to have embraced the business of photography from the earliest days and to have enjoyed commercial success on a par with their male counterparts. This topic has... Continue Reading →
This cabinet card was made at a studio called Atelier Mąke in Gnesen, Prussia, which is now Gniezno, Poland. An astute visitor to this page, D.B. from Milwaukee, informed me that Atelier Make was owned and operated by a woman named Ludwika Mąke, who worked as a professional photographer in Gniezno for 35 years. That's... Continue Reading →
The closest English equivalent of the German word Elfenreigen would be "fairy round dance," although Elfenreigen is also sometimes translated as "dance of the elves." "Carlsberg" may have been the location where this photo was taken. A very kind visitor to the blog (bradwardine42) left a comment under the post with the following information: I... Continue Reading →
"Now I lay me down to sleep" Stereoviews often portrayed scenes of domestic life, with people in costumes and staged settings. Such narrative scenes were generally meant to entertain or amuse. Some, especially the ones with children, were designed to touch a sentimental chord in the viewer. The subject of children saying bedtime prayers was... Continue Reading →
I bought this carte-de-visite from a dealer in Kettering, England. My guess would be that it belonged originally to a family associated with a British diplomatic mission in the Middle East or North Africa. India is also a possibility.
This charming little CDV came from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, but has no information on it to confirm its origin. The girls are elegantly dressed and must have come from relatively well-to-do families. After scanning the photo I noticed that one of the girls is of African or mixed-race heritage. I love the fact that the school's... Continue Reading →
This photograph was taken in Watertown, New York, a few miles from Lake Ontario and only 31 miles from the Canadian border. The name of the studio at the bottom of the cabinet card looks like "Gray," but I have yet to find a record of a photographer there by that name. I don't know... Continue Reading →
This postcard is well-traveled. I bought it online from someone in Estonia, who told me he had taken it from an album he had bought on a trip to Romania. The message on the back of the postcard is written in German, so he assumed the photo had been sent from Germany to relatives in... Continue Reading →
I joked in an earlier post about sibling portraits being amusing, but a more appropriate adjective for this studio portrait might be "intense." Looking at the back, the postcard was likely printed in the United States. A note is written in a young hand in Russian: "To dear Grandma and Grandpa from Tamara."
This postcard came from the estate of Hazel Alberts Peterson (1898-1989). As a girl, Hazel Alberts attended Seattle Seminary, a Free Methodist college preparatory school. College-level classes were introduced in 1910, and in 1915 the school's name was changed to Seattle Pacific College. For more information about Hazel and her family, please see the page... Continue Reading →
Tokens of Companionship 
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