A Woman's Portrait

I have a number of commercial portraits of women in my collection. As I've noted before, portraits of men are often very similar, but portraits of women are quite varied. While men's clothing and hair styles usually don't vary much within any era, woman's looks can be all over the place.

Tin Type Before and After

This is from back when I was working at the photo lab. Every so often I could talk the digital department to do a little repair work on some of the old photos. The original is a 19th century tin type of an African American lady. After digital corrections, the generation of a black & white negative, I made this nice print.

From Belgium

The person who sold these four images to me, told me that they were estate photos from a family that had come to the United States from Belgium. The street scene has signs in French, as well as the word, "Doyon." Doyon is a town in the Namur province, in the French speaking part of Belgium, so it's a good bet that the information is correct. It's very difficult to see, but there is an arrow drawn on to the group picture (the third lady from the right) identifying the woman as Lena Jagger. Another wedding photo without women. The portrait of the lady is labeled Christianson-Leberman. It's written in pencil right below the woman, so it may be the name of the subject, or the photographer.

Getting 75's Ready, World War 1

I know quite a lot about photographic printing, but not a lot about commercial printing. Anyway, I bought a stack of these at one of those antique malls, and after some research, I think, but won't promise, that they are rotogravures. When I was working at the photo lab, I had copy negs made, and then printed black & white photos of some of them. The real question I have is, what was their purpose, and what were they from? With the official U.S. logo in the bottom right corner of the image, two things come to mind. 1.) Photos passed by a military censor. 2.) Images released by the government, and if you know anything about the way Woodrow Wilson practically took over the American press for the war effort, that's the more likely of the two explanations. Too, did they come from a magazine or from some sort of government, propaganda campaign? Over the next couple of months, I'll be publishing a lot more of these images. The caption, "Getting 75's ready to move into position. 313th F. A. supporting 80th Div. Near Nixville."

Cars

I've got a lot of photographs of people and cars, so I'm going to bunch some together every once in awhile. The vertical format image is dated on the back, "Aug 18-1935." Notice the woman in the bathing suit in the background. The photo with the child on the running board has a New York license plate from 1921. Note the "NO BALL PLAYING ON THIS WALL OR FENCE," warning behind the four women.

Going to the Dance

A nice young couple going off to a party, probably from the 1930's.

S. S. Lurline, Cruise Ship

I've managed to dig up quite a bit of information about the S.S. Lurline. It was built at the Bethlehem Shipyards in Quincey, Massachusetts in 1932 for the Matson Shipping Lines. It was used in the San Fransisco, Honolulu, Los Angeles service. After the attack on Pearl harbor, it became a troop transport. Returned to Matson in 1948, it returned to the Hawaii cruise routes. Sold in February of 1963, it was renamed the Ellinis and sailed out of Rotterdam. For more info, go to www.maritimematters.com/lurline32.html The photograph looks like it's of people on a dock, waiting for the Lurline to either arrive or depart port. The life preserver has LAHD printed on it. I'm sure the LA stands for Los Angeles, but HD? Hawaii dock, maybe? My guess, from the early to mid fifties.