This week the Sepia Saturday Suggestion is a photograph of two little girls with wicker garden furniture, playing with some blocks. (And a very fine set of blocks it is too!)
The above example photograph is probably a professionally posed shot even though the child on the left moved.
There are a couple hundred photographs of two children in LOST GALLERY. Too many for one page. So for today's Sepia Saturday, let's concentrate here only on the examples that appear to be professionally posed and snapped.
These are tintypes.
Here's a couple happy faces. Note how few of the children on this page are smiling. Note that some of them are actually frowning. A couple have fear in their eyes. A couple seem ready for some mischief.
There's a hidden parent here ...
Here too.
There are over 100 children on this page. Only about 15 are smiling.
This one is probably not a professional shot but the pose was so cute I had to include it anyway
These are not happy children.
Okay, hold that pose! Now snap on back to the Sepia Saturday home page.
and find out what other photographs and stories this suggestion turned up.
Go back to THE MAIN INDEX PAGE
There are now more than 4,000 photographs in the Lost Gallery. Or try out the NEW BACK PAGE INDEXThe most popular photographs 
Area 51 and a Half 
Don't take my picture! Oh! You DID didn't you! 
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THE KIDS 
Dee and the Business School 
WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
Just scrolled down to the first photo and the first row after reading your entry and I laughed and laughed :-))
ReplyDeleteI will take my time to look at your great collection of these children's photos!
Thanks Susanna Rosalie. That first one is really a precious shot. Twins maybe..
DeleteWow! That was way too many children all at once :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kristin. Too many for me also.
DeleteI noticed some fancy wicker chairs in the photos.
ReplyDeleteThanks Postcardy. Yes there are several. Until today, I can't remember ever seeing any wicker furniture outside of a photo studio setting. Photographers used them I believe because they were lightweight and could be moved around easily. I made up two pages of them, the oldest in 2010: http://lostgallery.blogspot.com/2012/04/back-page-those-wicker-chairs.html
DeleteAh I never thought of the wicker chairs being used in the studios because they were light and easy to move around. Sensible. There are indeed some wonderful examples of styles in these photos. And the children are gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteThanks Alex Daw. Yes, the children are all special. I think the scared looks on some of them resulted from threats of punishment if they didn't hold still for the photographer. The furniture and props had to be easy to move around. Remember many of the early "studios" were more or less actually outdoors! They needed all the light they could get.
DeleteI am fascinated by the fashions in some - okay, all - of these photos!
ReplyDeleteAnd one might think no-one was happy in the days of yore.
Thanks VioletSky. In some cases the children were under threat of painful reward if they didn't behave for the photographer. And no, life in general was not easy for them. Infant mortality was high. Life expectancy was less than 50 years in the late 1800's.
DeleteYour photos of children are absolutely priceless! My favourite is the two little girls standing either side of that tall and elaborate wicker chair. Where do you find them all?
ReplyDeleteThanks Jo Featherton. I think children are my favorite category in the LOST GALLERY, whether one, two or a dozen. It's hard for me to pick a favorite. I have been rescuing abandoned photographs for many, many years from the junk shops and "antique" stores everywhere I go.
DeleteWhat an amazing collection of old photos of children & thank you for 'rescuing' them! I think it's sad whenever I see unidentified photos of anyone, but especially of children. I always wonder if, back in those times, they lived to adulthood and what sort of lives they might have had? And it's nice some of the photos include wicker. You're probably right about photographers using wicker because it was lightweight & easy to move. But I think they might also have used it because it was intricately & delicately designed & made a rather classy-looking prop.
ReplyDeleteThanks La Nightingail. You are right, the wicker offered classy looking detail that the camera loved. Some of the photographs I find, especially of children make me ask "How could this be a LOST photo?" I wonder too what sort of lives they had. Where a name is available, I look them up on Ancestry.com and if I can find them, build a small tree of their family there I post the picture in their profile. I have been lucky enough to send rescued photographs back to a family historian several times.
DeleteI bought a chest of drawers once in a thrift shop & once home with it, found one of those pictures of a sports team together with a single portrait of one player in a bottom drawer of the dresser which someone had forgotten to remove. There were just enough hints about what team it might have been to make a couple of phone calls & I was able to arrange for the picture to be returned to the owners & it was such a good feeling to be able to do that, so I can imagine you get the same good feeling whenever you're able to return a photograph.
DeleteThanks La Nightingale. You are right. There's always an extra surge of excitement when I find an old cabinet card with the photographer's imprint AND a name written on the reverse. Armed the family name, the location and a guess at the age, Ancestry.com can often come up with a likely family tree. There are ways to find where the photographer operated and what years. The shape and decorations of the card hints at the date too. The clothing in the photograph also hints at the age but it's not always reliable as clothing was handed down and preserved for decades sometimes. Of course where I found the photo is often not much help as these junk dealers shift their merchandise around from flea market to antique mall, hauling things around the country. And a relative might have sent a picture taken in Philadelphia to a relative in Galveston and the photograph turns up there when that part of the tree family dies out. But it does help when the family tree shows that although the person in the photograph lived in Philadelphia, they had a great uncle that lived in Galveston.
DeleteBlogger helps too. I always add the name, where available, when I post a photograph on LOST GALLERY in a category like Cabinet Cards or Photobooth Portraits. The name gets picked up in Google when a descendant makes a search with the name as a keyword.
And yes, there certainly is a good feeling when I am able to return a photograph to a current generation family historian. Sometimes it is the only photograph they have of that ancestor.
I was interested to go back and have a look after reading you comment about most of the children being serious rather than smiling. I'll have to go and have another look at my own collection now.
ReplyDeleteThanks Boobook. Let me know what you find. I can easily visualize Ma or Pa standing back behind the photographer with a stern look saying "You move and you'll be sorry." I suppose a photograph was a bit of a luxury back then and the photographer probably charged for shots wasted when a child fidgeted or squirmed.
DeleteI expect they were bored rigid! Some charmers here despite the lack of smiles, but I do find the hidden parent ones spooky.
ReplyDeleteThanks Little Nell. Yes, I think you are right. There wasn't much to entertain children back then but sitting, dressed in Sunday Best clothes, with a parent staring at them threateningly, in a dusty photographer's studio was probably torture for some. Every time I see a baby in a studio setting, I look for the hidden parent. Someone had to hold the baby still, or keep it from falling off its perch.
DeleteOh that poor poor boy in the Lord Fauntleroy suit. That poor poor boy. I hope he ran outside and ripped off all the lace and rolled in the mud.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tattered and Lost. Yes, he looks particularly uncomfortable. There are three or four on this page that probably would have preferred being somewhere else, doing something entirely different.
Delete