Lost Gallery: Back Page - The Big Smooch

This seemed like as good a time as any to assemble this page. I have been thinking of collecting all the big, fat kisses together and here at last, they are.

Muah, buss, smack, peck, smooch, suck face, XXX, snog, *, beso, First Base, Yankee Dime, canoodle.

Or as Louis Armstrong once said, “The touch of your lips all wrapped up amongst mine”

(Yeah, I know the KISS album cover doesn't really qualify as a "found photograph" but it begged me and I just couldn't say no. Besides, the incongruity appealed to me.)

This one is my favorite. I acquired it in a batch of pictures all apparently belonging to one woman.

Here is one of the happiest faces I have found in a long time.

	She is in most of the photographs in this "found" batch of old prints. They date from the 1940's and do tell a bit of a story. There was nothing noted on the reverse of any of the photographs but there are lots of landmarks, lots of people. No identity. So, I had to make up the names "Holli and her friend "Thelma." They have glamorous smiles and lots of clothes.
She just looks like a Holli, maybe “Hollywood”. Holli dominates a set of 116 pictures found all in one bunch from an estate sale in Johnson City, New York. I posted the whole set originally in August of 2008. Someday I hoped, someone would recognize something and at least establish a location.

Then, in June of 2009 I found another batch of photographs from an estate sale in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You can imagine my moment when I saw “Holli” again looking up at me from the stack, about 400 miles from the first group and ten months later.

I was able to coordinate some of the photographs by means of the photo lab’s series stamps on the reverse of many of them. Others matched in physical details of the prints. Six photographs, unrelated in any other way, have a light red stain at the edges showing they have been stored in the same place for a long time and thus linking them together. A few of the photographs in the Pennsylvania batch must have been taken on the SAME ROLL of film as the New York batch. From the clothing and locations, obviously some were taken the same day, perhaps only minutes apart. So now there are 63 more photographs of our Holli, her friends and her time.

One thing stands out in the Pennsylvania group. There is ONE photograph with a date on the reverse. November 22, 1943. Holli stands on her toes to give her man in uniform a big smooch. It must have been a special moment for them.

In the FLICKR SET I have designated each item as New York Source or Pennsylvania Source in the tags to show where each photograph was found. In addition I have noted the origin in some of the captions.

Our Holli was a popular girl, perhaps a USO volunteer. She loved the beach and the sun. Her bright smile probably made her an instant friend to anyone she met.

HERE IS THE ENTIRE SET. Look carefully at these photographs. What do you think is the story?

But I digress. Here are the other kisses from LOST GALLERY.

At this date, there are only nine found photographs in this category. There will be more.

It's not quite a kiss yet, but it's gonna be!
(If they can get those noses sorted out.)

The most popular photographs
An album of the most requested photographs in the Lost Gallery.

Area 51 and a Half
You are probably not authorized to see these.

Don't take my picture! Oh! You DID didn't you!
This is a collection of photographs that disappear on the way home from the photo processing shop.

And don't miss
Cabinet Card Gallery
One Man's Treasure
Penny Tales
Square America
Tattered and Lost
Vernacular Photography
The best
FOUND PHOTOGRAPH
sites on the web.
And for postcards try
THE DAILY POSTCARD.

THE KIDS
It is always a mystery how a photograph of any of these precious children could end up lost or abandoned. Here are a few. You will probably say "Ooh..." at least once.