Portraits from the first 100 years of photography
This late cabinet card (1900-1915) came to me from Finland. The only information on it is a stamp on the front with the name Ellen Björklund: I haven't found any information about Ellen Björklund online, or even another photo by her, which is surprising. I wondered if her studio might have been in Sweden,... Continue Reading →
This postcard was sent from Helsinki (Swedish: Helsingfors), the capital of Finland, to the Finnish port town of Hanko (Hangö) on February 16, 1915. At that time Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. Because Russia was engaged in the First World War, the card had to be cleared by a wartime government... Continue Reading →
I'm guessing they're siblings, but I can't say for sure. This early cabinet card photo came from a collection of musical ephemera in Boston, Massachusetts. (Two other posts featuring photos from the same collection are Music and baseball in the forest and "Waldfreunde" Mandolin Orchestra (1922).) Do their outfits suggest any particular place of origin? Despite... 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 →
They must be two sets of twins. The back of this CDV doesn't tell us anything about them, but it does identify the photographer, C. W. Gill. I didn't find anything about Gill online. The Hubbard Block was built on Public Square by Volney Stow Hubbard in 1868, which is about when this photo was... Continue Reading →
A few months ago a photo dealer in Arkansas listed the contents of a small 19th century album on eBay. The original owners of the album weren't identified, but some of the portraits had the names and addresses of photographers printed on them. The studios were located in Mobile and Talladega, Alabama. Some of the... Continue Reading →
A note on the back of this studio portrait says either "Harold Winnie" or "Harold & Winnie." While Winnie could be a last name, it's more likely the first name of the girl on the left, who must be Harold's sister. The studio is identified on the mat just below the image: Gordon & Blees. ... 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 carte-de-visite was made by the studio of Albert Baron & César Mitkewicz in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium. The mother's gaze engages the viewer while the father's seems unfocused. The two sisters pose affectionately as the younger one reads from a book.
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 
Recent Comments