Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Ah! Brighton in the early in the 20th century. This is the setting of many of my beloved photos of happy seaside visitors posing with a giant Felix doll. (See any number of posts, such as here and here.) My imagination turns to another universe where I am happy ensconced as an itinerant photographer, set up at the shore, busily snapping photos of happy tourists. Another fantasy I indulge in is that I travel to Brighton and find one of the intact Felix dolls in a dusty closet there – and take it home for my very own! (The seller identified this photo as Brighton; the photo is entirely unmarked.)
There is a history of Mickey Mouse dolls for posing with as well. Perhaps because the copyright was held a bit closer, most of those Mickey’s are off-model indeed, at least among the ones I own. (Some of those post are here and here.) I offer an especially unidentifiable example from a prior post, taken at the Chicago World’s Fair, from my collection below.
Today’s photo is a very proper looking Mickey Mouse – he doesn’t even have that sort of fang-y look I like that many of the British Mickey’s I have, influenced by the design of Dean’s Rag Company. I share one of those below. Someone paid up for this Mickey stand-in and purchased the real thing I think.
Today’s photo is quite tiny, just a very few inches across, about 2.5″x 1.75″ including the border. It has a reddish cast to it (I have enhanced it slightly, increasing the contrast) which Kim tells me looks like sun contact prints he used to make as a kid. It is printed on a thickish paper, somewhat brittle paper, unlike what one expects from more contemporary photo paper or even and early photo postcard. While I cannot really pinpoint the precise process, I believe it was some sort of a simple early contact print, made in a camera. Obviously it was fixed and not entirely fugitive, as it is with us almost a century later.
This photo is a rather homemade affair overall, and the fellow seems to have been persuaded to stop, well-dressed (short trousers, cap and tie), briefcase and all and perch on this primitive seat with Mickey. He’s thrown an arm around Mickey’s shoulders. There appears to be another camera on a tripod behind him to one side, and the shadows on this beach are long. To me it feels like early morning rather than evening.
I like the woman behind him most of all. There’s something about the casual way she is captures that especially appeals. A bath house of some sort is shown in the distance, just beyond her, a wooden beach chair too if you look very carefully. Unlike the Felix photos there is no evidence of a numbering system to return the photo to the person posing so I can’t imagine how that might work. I wonder a bit if this wasn’t either just someone sort of stealing a photo in passing, or someone the photographer knew. A summer long past, for me it tugs at a certain yearning for the early mornings and quiet evenings at the beach where I grew up, enjoyed before or after busy, tourist and family jammed days.
Pam's Pictorama 