Today in 2005 - Old Photographs

Wednesday, September 07, 2005 Photographs have always held a special attraction and awe. The art and appreciation aside, they also serve as a boost to an ever molding memory. Photos were always kept in dated envelopes or albums, negatives carefully cross referenced and dated. Well, usually. They are as close to a time machine as we will get. So, I find myself unable to throw away photographs of any kind. Even when I don’t know the subject. Even when it is a lousy photograph. Each print is somebody, something, somewhere. They almost always will mean something to somebody; A reminder, a time left lying in a corner, a feeling waiting to come around again, if only the photograph met the right person. This mild obsession was illuminated on the discovery that mother (or “Uncle” Bob) had torn many old photographs from the family album (Primarily the ones showing my father, Gerald Edward.) Remaining now is only a small collection of “Smile-a-Minute” photo portraits and a scant few Brownie Camera shots, mostly of me and brother Gary, together and separate. Photography was in its infancy in those days and very expensive. These tiny old photos I found still show the shreds of the stick-on corners and black album pages from which they were torn. Of course the negatives are long gone. Only six photos have turned up of my father, from the pages of books and stuck to backs of other photos.. There’s hardly any of the paternal ancestral family prior to that. Of course there would have been only a few anyway as this would be in the early 1900’s and before. Looking through mother’s old photo album was always a treat for a little boy. Certain pictures are still stuck in memory. They are gone forever. That said you will understand my obsession with identifying photographs that I have found. I finally worked up the time (and energy) to sort through some of mother’s old photographs. Many are of mother and Bob and their various projects. But there are others. I have collected a number that I need help identifying. Some I can identify with some certainty and others are complete blanks.

The Profile(more than you really wanted to know)is here.

Lost GalleryThe rescue mission for battered and abused orphan photographs.

For more about Double Exposures see this page in Lost Gallery.