Four!

Today marks the fourth anniversary of The Passion of Former Days!

As usual, the occasion makes me go "wow." To be honest, I thought it would be something I dabbled with for a month or maybe two. The first time a post hit 100 views my jaw hit the floor. Now... four years, 462 posts, and 940,000 page views. The pace has slowed a bit from earlier days, but really that's been because of the blog's influence, too. Through this little endeavour I realized how much I love historical photographs, which led me to the decision to switch fields (from medieval history, of all places), which led me to a master's in Photographic Preservation at Collections Management, which itself exposed me to more amazing photographs that I ever could have believed I'd see (I've been inches away from the first daguerreotype!). I just accepted my offer of admission to do a PhD at Canada's top university, on snapshots. At the moment I'm working doing research with WWI images, which is very fitting, considering two of my first three blog posts were of WWI photographs. 

The moral is: you sure never know what decisions are going to be life-changing!

It's been absolutely wonderful to see this blog--and, of course, these pictures--get the feedback it has. There are so many great pictures out there, and after all these years and all this learning and all this experience I only feel that more. I love that there's people out there who love this too. Thank you for all the follows, and all the shares, and, most importantly, all the enjoyment!

FOUR YEARS!

© Crown copyright. IWM (RAF-T 6311)

Four planes of the RAF aerial display team the Red Pelicans, 1963-64.  Source

University of Washington Libraries

Four women in wood veneer bathing suits for a lumber promotion, ca. 1929, Washington (State). Source

© IWM (D 944)

Four Belgian children with jammy faces, London, 1940. Source

Mille Baisers II

As long-time followers may remember, I'm an avid collector of a certain genre of postcards most readily defined as "French romantic fantasy postcards of the 1920s and 30s" (though admittedly not most catchily). I've devoted a couple of posts to these, as well as, last year, starting them their own blog. Eventually I decided the blog format wasn't doing what I wanted to, and set out to create a more online collection-like site to share the postcards and the research I've done with them (there is currently no source that discusses them at any length, at least in English). I have many more ambitions for the site than are currently realized, but I feel it's reached the point of being meaningful to launch, with the caveat (or bonus) that much, much more is still to come. 

The new site, like the old blog, is named Mille Baisers, which is a French term of endearment often written at the ends of letters and postcards. It means "a thousand kisses." 

The site currently features about 150 of these postcards, front and back, with relevant tags and cataloging information; I have somewhere over 300 in my collection which shall be added on an ongoing basis. Here are a few favourites. 

personal collection

personal collection

personal collection

Exhibition: Curious Anarchy

In my day job I'm a master's student of Photographic Preservation and Collections Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada (though I generally change that full title to a simple "degree in Working With Photographs."). My master's class has been working on the creation of an exhibition of photographs (entitled Curious Anarchy) from the private collection of a local curator, and it's amazing. A crazy variety of really, really cool stuff. 

While the exhibition itself, of course, is in Toronto, my group and I have worked on a website containing images of all the images included, plus lots more from the collection, so it can be explored by people all over the world (like you folks!). There's also a blog, which I've (unsurprisingly) been in charge of. New posts are going to be coming out from next week all through May (the month of the exhibition), talking more about various objects from the collection. I'm writing about half myself, with the rest written by my very interesting, intelligent, and wonderful colleagues. I'm also the boss of the exhibition's Twitter and Facebook, which feature great objects from the collection on a regular basis. So really the conclusion is inescapable-- if you like The Passion of Former Days, you will like Curious Anarchy!!

Have a look, and have fun!

Laura Margaret Ramsey, 2014

Curious Anarchy

Website

Blog

Facebook

Twitter

Third Anniversary!

Wow... today The Passion of Former Days is three!! I cannot believe how the time has flown, nor how much success this blog has had, nor how wonderful you followers are. This blog has been literally life-changing; that launch day three years ago led me into the field of photographic history and the master's degree I am getting frightfully close to completing. Thanks to this blog I've made cyanotypes and taken photographs with a 1920s Vest Pocket Kodak and handled daguerreotypes from the first couple years of photography's existence.

 In three years we've had over 400 posts and 620,000 page views-- now THAT I cannot believe! It is totally thanks to you all that it's gone the way it has-- thank you!!

Thanks to the aforementioned masters and particularly work on a thesis on the deckle-edge in snapshots, I haven't had enough spare brain energy to think up anything good for the anniversary, though, of course, general good stuff is upcoming. So, today's post is simply a hodgepodge of random photographs from the Flickr Commons (the initial source of inspiration for the blog) that I've always really liked but never had a place for in a formal post.

Once more, thank you all!!

State Library of Queensland

A group of people in party dress posed in a fake boat, Australia, ca. 1940. Source

Nationaal Archief

Mardi Gras costumes, the Netherlands, 1931. Source

George Eastman House

A spirit photograph including a cabinet card, ca. 1865. Source

New Blog: Mille Baisers

You may remember a couple posts I've done on these romantic postcards from France in the 1920s, the first actually called Romance Postcards of the 1920s, the second The Romance of Robert and Raymonde. The cards look like this:

personal collection

personal collection

personal collection

If you liked these, great news! I've started a blog dedicated to them, Mille Baisers (the French equivalent of ending a a letter "with love" or "xoxoxo".

In this blog I'm not only going to share postcards from my rapidly expanding collection, but discuss various aspects of their characteristics and creation. This is my original research; no other photo historians have looked at these, nor has anyone else, really. So, if you're interested, do stop by! 

The Passion of Former Days, of course, will continue as is, don't worry. 

Blog Anniversary

Today marks the two-year anniversary of The Passion of Former Days! Hooray!!

San Diego Air and Space Museum

Ticker tape celebration! (actually for Charles Lindbergh, 1927. Source)

In two years we've had over 330 posts, 360,000 page views, and who knows how many thousands of pictures. I've gone from dabbler in the Flickr Commons to graduate student in Working With Photographs, as a direct result of this blog. I'm still amazed at all this and at all the wonderful people who follow and share and enjoy. I work very hard on this and it's so rewarding. 

For this anniversary week I have a special series of posts, exclusive to this blog. I'm lucky enough to have a photo album my grandmother made when she was sixteen, in 1947. It's packed full of photographs, arranged and captioned to present a view of her life at the time. I've gone through and photographed every page, photograph, and caption for preservation and sharing, so this week I shall be presenting that. It will start tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Finally, I thought I'd also commemorate today by a journey through some of the blog's most popular posts. At the bottom it gives the "top" 7, but a) I don't quite know how it decides that, because while all those are popular, their rating stats don't match the ones I get if I go through individual post views and b), pff, top 7? How about top 25? 

So, here are your 25 favourites, as of today!

1. Scotland by Photochrom



2. A Pet Ocelot 



3. Snow in Paris

New and Improved!

First all I want to thank my dear followers for your patience through my erratic posting! As usual I'll say (and try) that I'll be on some kind of regular schedule soon... I want to be! I'm over 300,000 page views now and I can't believe that. Thanks to everyone for comments and follows and likes and shares-- still as exciting now as when it started!

Two innovations:

1. The Passion of Former Days now has a domain name! annakrentz.blogspot.com will still direct you, but so will the shiny new formerdays.com. Spiffy, no? 

2. The Passion of Former Days now has a Facebook! I'll post every post there as well as the odd link and perhaps some photos from my ever-growing personal collection. Hooray! 

On Facebook!

New post tomorrow, but for now, well, what's a post without pictures? Here's a few snapshots from my collection for fun!

A Toast!

To a year of this blog!

To amazing old photographs!

To wonderful archives!

And especially to all my wonderful fans and viewers!

Cheers!!!

Ballet dancer Edward Villella raises a toast with his choreographer and others to celebrate his performance on the New York Stage, 1969. Source

American writer Erskine Caldwell and Russian writer Alexei Tolstoy toast with cognac, Moscow, 1941. Source

Shirley Temple toasts her new husband John Agar on their wedding day, California, 1945. Source

An army man on leave drinks a toast with his family and two army friends, Cheshire, England, 1944. Source

Two men toast Chinese New Year, Chinatown [NY? San Fran?], 1912. Source

Bohemian artists raise a toast at an indoor picnic, Sydney, Australia, 1907. Source

Cosmopolitan magazine editor raises a bottle of champagne to her magazine's millionth copy, NYC, 1965. Source

American teenagers drink a toast at an inn in Heidelberg, Germany, 1947. Source

Marilyn Lovell toasts the safe return of her husband, Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell, Houston, Texas, 1968. Source

Introduction

History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. ~Dexter Perkins (American historian)

I've found the past irresistibly interesting for a very, very long time. I've always felt that if anyone doesn't like history, it's only because it wasn't presented to them very well-- history is, at heart, all stories, all characters. It is a "different country", as L. P. Huxley famously put it, and exploring it is almost a form of travel. We see different things, things that look different, people who act in different ways... but at heart, people who are the same as us. People who feel just the same things we feel, however different their circumstances. That is what I love about history, the people.

That's an awfully academic introduction for a blog that's essentially going to consist of looking at pictures, isn't it? Let's have a picture, then, before any more semi-serious discussion.

I've chosen this one because I think it's beautiful and so sweet, and because it does touch on that universal of humanity, across the countries and across the ages: love. Source

I've acquired a habit for spending hours looking at online museum and gallery collections of old photographs, posters, ads, and so on-- and really it's just reinforced to me this beautiful feeling that the people of the past are people just like we are. With photography, you can look into the eyes of a young man from the civil war, and see the person that he is, see how he could be someone you know dressed up in period costume. I'm especially touched by war photographs because you see these very real people in circumstances they shouldn't be in, and it makes the whole thing feel so real.

Yes, this means pictures.

Looking at this picture brings tears to my eyes. He is so young, and he looks so haunted... and, sadly, he didn't survive the war. Just this one imagine makes the pain of WWI feel so much more real to me than any amount of statistics could. Source (and more details)

A Civil War photograph-- think, this young man lived over 150 years ago, and you can look into his eyes and get a sense of who he is. He is a real person in a real war, just like the gunner in the last photo. I don't think I'll ever stop being touched by that. Source

As is clear if you've clicked on any of the links, these pictures come from the online collections of many wonderful institutions. The Flickr Commons is a spot where various insitutions from all over the world can share their collections, and is a terrific resource-- there will be lots that I found there. Individual sites are usually amazing, too-- The Library of Congress has a phenomenal online collection, as do the Imperial War Museum, British Library, and National Museum of Scotland. I will link all photographs either to their listing on the Flickr Commons or the individual site, and encourage all readers to explore the collections further!

Finally-- some of this stuff is just fun. We're going to look at wartime propaganda posters, for sure... and also some wartime or WPA posters that are just awesome. Enjoy.

Source