Saturday, July 28, 2012

Back Page - The Front Porch Swing


Child in a swing

The front porch swing. This was the "air conditioner" of the time.

Part of the rewards of rescuing old photographs is the finding a snapshot that is a reminder of one’s own past.. This could be the swing on the front porch of the house where I grew up and then left. The last house I lived in with my parents. A long time ago.

The proximity of the house next door, the "front" bedroom window, the lap siding, the unpainted wood swing; it could be from my own past.

Yeah, this is my younger brother and me. We are on the steps at the front porch in Kansas. Many years ago. The porch swing is in the background. The trellis in this picture wasn't always there.

1946


Girl in a porch swing

So now there is a new category.
The Front Porch Swing.
Let's see what I find.



Porch Swing
The porch swing is just barely visible in this one.
Woman on porch


Group on a porch
Dad and Baby in porch swing
Woman and porch swing







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

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

Don't take my picture!
Oh! You DID didn't you!
completely unaware of the photographer

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.

All images are the property of Lost Gallery and the author. Permission must be granted for their use. All rights reserved.

THE KIDS Lesson one.
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.

Dee and the Business School Dee and the Business School
The beautiful Dee. A curious story; What do you see?

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Neiffel and Helvetica Typehigh

"What are they doing?"

Friday, July 27, 2012

Turn It Over! There's something on the back! July 2012





Very often, notations on the reverse of these found photographs are obscure or too brief or illegible. Most often there is nothing at all.

But now and then there is a message from the past that sparkles.

Back in March of 2009 LOST GALLERY had a full page of photographs and their very interesting reverse sides. There have been many new additions to the collection since then.

Here is a new group of those photographs with mysterious, funny and sometimes puzzling reverse sides; tiny bits of history, reaching out to us over the decades and sometimes centuries.



754

On reverse:
One of the new large
750 class of engines now
used by the K. C. S. on
Heavener-DeQueen division
a third larger than the
700 class used when you
were here,
weight 532000
8/1/18

20120628 locomotive revere



Sitting on a Rock

Four children on a rock reverse

on reverse:
It ain't worth a darn
Ben

On the bluff
at sea share(?)
Of ardmore
the
baboons




Class Picture
Class Picture reverse

Mrs. Bessie Tippit (?)



Family group
Family group


On reverse:
Ely Why did
you send this
back it
was back to
me and was




Family at the front of the house. (Enhanced)

family at the front of the house reverse

On reverse:
Mrs Don Rushing & Mrs
Lillie Friday & Mr
Friday
Mrs Friday's Baby




Three women and Watermelon

postcard watermelon reverse

On the front:
The Adams delegation
It sure is fine. (under picture)

Did not know that I had changed so much that you
couldn't even recognize me. Yes I have a whole
series of them. The last postal I had from clifford
he said that he couldn't look
around in the room without
seeing me. Ask him if
they have gotten his
memerous for him to
cound now.
I am like the dutchman
was; when buiz(?) is dull I
haven't enought money to
go any place. and when it
is good am too busy to leave.
Sure do wish I could come
and eat some of Martha's
good cooking you can imagine
how much we do when
we are light housekeeping
but think of me somtimes when you are
(on reverse)
enjoying all of that
good eating
Nettie said tell you
and Cliff hello.
Myrtle




Man and woman with hat

Reverse

W. E. (?)rter (perhaps Foster) & Wife
Too
Wm & Mrs. W. H. Atkinson
Taken Sept 11 19 1903
Sllelm P U (?)




C-47 and crew

Detail of slide mount

This one is not exactly on the reverse of the photograph as it is actually a slide. It is labeled: Tysinger & Robinett
at Whitehorse Cana




Earl G. Hammock

"Earl G. Hammock" "Wash Day"

On reverse:
On reverse:
Doing something
I don't like much
but the cat likes
to see me work

This is Earl
washing

(This one and the next five were featured on a LOST GALLERY page examining Photographer and Artist Earl G. Hammock.)




Earl and Ethel

Earl and Ethel

On reverse:
This is
Earl and Ethel
before they
wer married




Earl

Earl

On reverse:
Earl
the yongest
boy he runs a
studo




Leonard and Earl

Leonard and Earl reverse

On reverse:
This is Leonard
and Earl
My oldest and
yongest

Featured on a LOST GALLERY page about Photographer and Painter Earl G. Hammock.




portrait of Earl and reverse

On Reverse:
Sincerely your friend,
Earl Hammock
1915

Featured on a LOST GALLERY page about Photographer and Painter Earl G. Hammock.




portrait of Earl and reverse

On Reverse:
Earl Hammons (Hammock)
1915

Featured on a LOST GALLERY page about Photographer and Painter Earl G. Hammock.



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

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


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


BACK TO
THE MAIN INDEX PAGE
Or try out the NEW
BACK PAGE INDEX

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

All images are the property of Lost Gallery and the author. Permission must be granted for their use. All rights reserved.

THE KIDS Lesson one.
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.

Dee and the Business School Dee and the Business School
The beautiful Dee. A curious story, What do you see?

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Neiffel and Helvetica Typehigh

"What are they doing?"

Monday, July 23, 2012

Well, I think it is ...


Billie Holiday and Joe Guy?


I found this photograph in a "nostalgia" (junk) shop in Clinton, Oklahoma, along the old route 66. There was something familiar about it.

I spent a few mornings chasing shreds and threads of evidence.

Beer labels get redesigned quite often it seems. I was able to find a close match for the Pabst label in the lower right corner in a

1951 Magazine Advertisement.

All others that I found (and there were many) were quite different than this one. Most have the main (lower) label slanted on the bottle.

The Miller High Life labels on the other two bottles have eluded dating so far but appear to be rather early ones.

It appears the pill-box hat fashion started in the 1930’s but reached a peak about 1961 when Jacqueline Kennedy wore one.


After all that I stumbled across THIS.

And I am now convinced this is Billie Holiday. But, I will entertain any other theories. What a find.

The photograph is on sturdy 8X10 inch print paper, with nothing on the reverse except the Kodak logo, and appears to have been a non-promotion photograph. (If you do a Billie Holiday image search, 99% of them show her with her trademark white gardenia in her hair.)

The print itself is not in perfect shape. There are lots of scratches and creases. It was printed by someone who knew what it was and handled by several who did not.

To further complicate things, not all Billie Holiday photographs look like Billie Holiday. Comparing album covers and promo shots, one might think that there were several people with that name.

Here she is at her finest in 1957
.

We lost Billie Holiday July 17, 1959.


Inserting typical cabaret wording I think the sign on the left says:
You must be
21
and prove it.
Check In.

I have no idea the significance of the “Checking Out” sign. Maybe these are their humorous “Entrance” and “Exit” signs. The background may be further away than it appears here. It is out of focus. The “Checking Out” sign may be over a doorway. The area bounded by the two walls with the pictures, may be an entry/exit lobby.

There are at least ten large pictures on the wall and three smaller ones visible. None are clear enough to identify.

I am hoping that someone will recognize the place. That would go a long way toward identifying the people for certain.

If the man is Joe Guy the trumpet player, it is certainly a rare shot.



But no, it’s probably not Joe Guy. Billie Holiday had a number of boyfriends during and after divorcing Jimmy Monroe in 1947, until 1952 when she married Louis McKay. Most accounts say they were ALL abusive and exploitive. The face of the man beside her is so distorted and obscured that it could be almost any of them I suppose. I tried to pick one possibility that would fit the time frame. As with Holiday herself, various pictures of Joe Guy and Louis McKay do not always agree. And further, those examples may be misidentified. So a photographic comparison is difficult.

The guy in the photo could be a number of people, musicians, managers, boyfriends or just a guy who happened to be standing there. If a date could be established for the photograph, it would go a long way toward fixing identities and location.

The various short biographies of her life are confusing and some are downright contradictory. A couple lines in an article by Robert Fulford reviewing a 2005 biography “With Billie” by Julia Blackburn probably says it best: “There will never be an authoritative Life of Billie Holiday. The documents don't exist, and the witnesses have often lied, many of them because they were crooks. Even honest witnesses have faulty memories, inflected by narcotics; Billie herself would tell the same story several ways. “

It is quite possible that this was around the date of the Carnegie Hall concert. March 27, 1948.

I am not sure how to read the expressions. She seems pleased about seeing a camera; he doesn’t seem to have noticed it. Both are caught off guard.

The pictures on the wall could be anyone. Miles Davis or Robert Johnson, or maybe not musicians at all. I can’t tell. Maybe I will run across another copy of one of those poster size portraits and be able to match them up. I can’t tell much from this print.

David Stone Martin - Billie Holiday
Art by the famous David Stone Martin

So what we have all together is this:

A pillbox hat, popular in the mid fifties to mid sixties.

A woman with a fox fur stole just like
Billie Holiday’s fox fur stole.

A print dress of the type Holiday often wore.

Long gloves draped over the purse just like Billie Holiday wore in many other photographs.
Here she is posed with her dog in a dressing room.
Long gloves were popular around that time.

The cheek bones, the eyebrows, the out-of-line upper right canine. (Note that Billie Holiday was most often photographed from the left side so that it does not show.)

Accompanied by a fellow that might be Joe Guy.

Beer labels seem to be from the early 1950's.

What do you think?

Go on. Tell me who you think it is.


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

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

Don't take my picture!
Oh! You DID didn't you!
completely unaware of the photographer

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.

All images are the property of Lost Gallery and the author. Permission must be granted for their use. All rights reserved.

THE KIDS Lesson one.
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.

Dee and the Business School Dee and the Business School
The beautiful Dee. A curious story; What do you see?

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Neiffel and Helvetica Typehigh

"What are they doing?"

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