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

St. Patrick's Day Postcards

An early St. Patrick's day post! In threeo days it's the anniversary of this blog and I've something special planned for the following days, including the 17th. But, of course, I can't let a holiday pass without dipping into the New York Public Library's collection of early twentieth century holiday postcards. So once again we have a wonderful collection of the lovely, the cheesy, and the odd. As usual I've noted any of the messages that go beyond "best wishes" or similar. To see the back in its entirety simply follow the source link and click the arrow to flip the object. 

So, happy early St. Patrick's Day!

New York Public Library

Postmarked 1932. Source

New York Public Library

Unwritten and unmailed. Source

New York Public Library

Unwritten and unsent. Source

The Studio Backdrop

Studio portraits are all well and good, but isn't that blank background boring? Wouldn't it be cool if you could look like you were in a fancy house or on the beach? This, pretty much, is what people were thinking right from the start of photography (there's daguerreotypes with painted backgrounds behind the sitters). These backdrops were especially popular in studio portraits of the nineteenth century. As handheld cameras and snapshots gained in popularity the backdrop began to fall out of fashion. After the first couple decades of the twentieth century you mostly only see painted backdrops in arcade photos and photobooth shots, but some studios kept using them until the mid-century. 

George Eastman House

A woman with a fancy interior backdrop, ca. 1895. Source

National Library of Ireland

Children and a toy wagon, Waterford, Ireland, 1906. Source

Library of Congress

Helen Saunders, 1914. Source

Montgomery Clift Watches Himself Onscreen

A series of photographs taken by J. R. Eyerman of actor Montgomery Clift while he watches himself onscreen. I love the concept of this series--taken on infrared film, so unobtrusive-- and Clift's range of expressions and poses in what's maybe two hours. 

Taken in 1948, right at the start of Clift's movie career (though he was already a Broadway veteran). In 1949 he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his first movie, The Search. From the one shot of the screen this film looks like it might be The Heiress, released in 1949. 

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Source

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Source

J. R. Eyerman, LIFE © Time Inc.

Source

Daguerreotype Babies

From the first generation of babies to be captured by photograph!

 Average exposure time for a portraits in a well-lit studio during the Daguerrian era (1839-1860) was about 2-5 seconds, during which the sitter couldn't move or the picture would blur. Not bad for an adult sitter, but pretty well impossible for the little ones, let alone getting a pose, gaze, and preventing crying at parental separation. So just about every photograph from the time (well, most of the 19th century!) has a baby on a mother's lap. Sometimes she's a part of the picture and sometimes she's cropped out, or obscured, or even disguised as furniture!

George Eastman House

By Southworth and Hawes, Boston, ca. 1850. Source

Library of Congress

ca. 1855. Source

George Eastman House

By Southworth and Hawes, Boston, ca. 1850. Source