Those are great, Chuck! I love old photos. I have a bunch hanging in my study. One is of a soldier in what looks like a Civil War-era tintype or whatever they're called. I have no idea who he is. I also have a photo of five people that looks, from their clothing, to be from around the turn of the 20th century. I have no idea who those people are, either, although I do remember vague stories about a cousin of my grandmother's who was a laudanum addict. I think she is the teenage girl in the photo.
My grandfather was a longtime newspaper editor in Cedar Rapids, IA, so I have some great ones of him taken by staff photographers. Also, a famous photographer of the 1950s or so took a whole series of gorgeous photos of my grandfather that were supposed to run in Life Magazine as part of a feature on people across the country. His section was called "Civic Minded Businessman"
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I stumbled upon them online a couple of years ago and was dying to get copies to share with my brother. Alas, the photos are copyrighted. As I recall, if they ran in the magazine I could request a copies at a reasonable price. But since they didn't, I'd have to pay to get rights -- individually for each photo! -- and the price would be like $200 apiece. I tried calling photo shops to see if they could pull the image from the website and they were kind of doubtful it would work out well, and anyway they may be prohibited by copyright law.
Here's one sample. Check out the phone. The page won't even let me copy it to post the photo here (at least not with my usual procedures).
http://artsandculture.google.com/asset/civic-minded-business-man-harry-boyd-of-cedar-rapids-iowa/6AGXWT8Ugf-GdQ?ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A8.971625471800408%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A2.620702511773941%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000003%7D%7DOne final story of grandfather pix. A professional photographer got a picture of him and my uncle at a baseball game. My grandfather is wearing a fedora and watching the game. On his left, closer to the camera, my uncle is eating ice cream and looks to be about 10 or 12.
Years on years later, completely coincidentally, I happened to go to a baseball game with my family and brother's family, where I took a picture of my son sitting next to my brother. My brother is wearing a baseball cap and watching the game. My son is on his left, closer to the camera, eating ice cream. He's approximately the same age as my uncle was in the previous photo.
Most amazingly of all, the kids' ice cream poses are almost identical -- holding the container in their left hand, holding a spoon with a bite of ice cream in their right hand, poised to take the bite.
I had the recent photo redone in B&W and hung them side by side. They are so eerily matching you'd think I set the photo up on purpose, but I didn't.
Topic: Cellar Scribblings (Read 13779378 times)