Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I purchased these two photos on Instagram in a wave of ones from the same period and probably place. While I suspect I purchased them at the same time and from the same vendor, I do not remember for sure. Both are snapshots printed on thin, early paper and bear the black paper stuck to the back that is evidence that they came from a photo album. They were sold to me by someone in the Midwest and I think that is the area they depict as well.

I can only say there was a time last summer when images, mostly of women, from the turn of the century were attracting my attention and I purchased a pile. They are mostly in outdoor settings of the beach (see the one above), garden or yard and notably they show a persistent passion for being presented in a line – not just these photos, but many I didn’t or wasn’t able to purchase of women sitting on the ground in a line, or even finding ways to do a vertical with a ladder. (Some of my posts of these photos can be found here and here.)

In the smaller grouping, which is also the smaller photo, the women pose in what appears to be the lush side-yard garden. They peer at us above and through these leafy vines on this bright sunny day. You can almost feel the heat of the midday sun looking at the short shadows. I might hazard a guess that it is mother and four daughters. It is hard to see, but I think the daughters are in white cotton dresses; mom appears to be wearing a dark skirt. Their hair is piled up on their heads, although one has it wound in tight braids. The shadow of a ladder is in evidence in the doorway.

The larger photo is the one I favor a bit. There is something just wonderful about this group of young women in white, lined up behind this somewhat ramshackle fencing, covered in overgrowth – is it hay in front of and behind them? Hard to say how they managed to get back there without getting stuck by the barbed wire of the fence, but the photographer had a good eye and got them between the posts. Their long, white dresses are partially visible behind a layer of the plants. The white, cloudless sky is a tribute to the inability of early film to capture clouds at the time, however curiously it works to the favor of the picture. (The soiling and bend of the early paper creates an illusion of sky that is not really of the image.) The photo is very much of a specific time and place, but also has a timeless quality.

If you look carefully, they are all smiling and laughing. At first I thought it was a group of young, female friends but one or two women look older – second and third from the left. I wonder if it is a coincidence that my reading this year, young plucky girl stories such as Ruth Fielding and the Camp Fire Girls, (some of those posts here and here) take place in the same period during the halcyon days of the early and mid-teens of the last century.