old photo

Scratching Post

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Bad Kitty! No scratching! How very many times have I repeated that phrase? Like all cat people, ours is an uneasy treaty with our little wild animals in our one room apartment version of Eden. We are loath to allow the destruction of beloved antiques (oh those caned chairs – like this fellow is going at) or expensive couches and rugs. I love the little devils more than any piece of furniture, but it can get expensive and annoying. There are scratching posts, cardboard boxes with catnip and whatnot where scratching is sanctioned – encouraged in fact. Obviously, declawing is not a phrase we utter in this house.

Like bunnies and beavers which have to nibble and gnaw in order to keep their teeth filed, I guess cats need to scratch to keep their claws sharp and from getting too long. Still, scratching is more than that to a cat – there is joy to scratching. Scratching is a way of marking your turf – it’s a statement. As shown here – it is both a cross cultural phenomenon, Mr. French cat, and one that goes back quite aways.

Blackie is the first cat of my acquaintance who appears to not have so much as a clue as to what the various scratching devices scattered around our tiny apartment are to be used for. He watches Cookie happily scratching away – putting some real back into it. But he has never so much as taken a side swipe at one of them – I have tried every type: cardboard, carpet, rope, large, hanging and on the floor. We’ve showered them in catnip – tried running his feet across them. If anything he seems horrified by them. This does lead to some friction. I occasionally tell him he would be a PERFECT cat if only he could figure that out.

Meanwhile, although my cat Otto knew all about scratching posts and employed them, she had a fetish about Kim’s work chair. She is shown below, in a former apartment, in a series of polaroids Kim took over several days in April, 1995. Evidently she would take the chair on every day at the same time. Needless to say, she eventually denuded the entire chair. Kim continued to use it however, until the frame too fell apart one day, years later.

Otto 4/16/95

Otto 4/16/95

Otto 4/17/19

Otto 4/17/19

Otto 4/25/05

Otto 4/25/05

Kitten Women

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Kitten Women

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Who can resist taking a photo of new kittens? Clearly the instinct goes back pretty far, as shown here. This card is very beaten up, but I do love it. The alternating height of the women, black and white of the skirts – and in fact kittens! – is wonderful. It is a well composed and thoughtfully executed photo, in addition to the design of the women and cats, the foreground divides against the rising background nicely. It could almost be a set, but is not.

For all of that, it is very poorly printed – negative unevenly placed and black edges showing on two sides, and printed upside down on the postcard stock. Sloppy. Makes me assume that the person who took it was not the person who printed it. Either that or they couldn’t help having a great eye, even if they didn’t much care about the end product of their work. Nothing is written on the back and it was never mailed.

The shorter women of the four, #2 and #4, have tiny, nipped-in waists and are the more fashionably dressed. The women in white seem to be a bit tattier – especially their shoes. No one really looks a lot alike among the four, although if you really study them a case could be made for them being sisters or otherwise related.

Among the kittens, of course I have a soft spot for that black one, #3, curled up contentedly in the hands of the one woman. Cat #1 has annoyed ears, #2 napping, and #4 is the action one – poised for adventure. Let him get at it!

Uninvited Guests

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: If you are a cat or a dog, is there anything better than an unattended table of food? Nope – it is the best. I particularly like the way the two dogs are seated in their chairs, very polite. Sadly, the bright sun seems to have lead to an over-exposure and the precise nature of the treats is a bit obscured.

It brings to mind a stolen food story – one of many, as I am sure all of us with pets can recount. One morning I had set a small bowl of cooked asparagus out on the counter to use in an omelet. I left the kitchen briefly and when I returned the asparagus was entirely gone. Turns out my cat Otto (who loved asparagus) had stolen each and every stalk – and piled it up, neatly, behind the bathroom door.

On the back of this card, written in an absolutely perfect, looping handwriting, it says, Dec. 9, 11- Very many thanks for the Bucks paper. I hope you had a fine day for your visitors yesterday. It was a wet afternoon here, but lovely today. With much love, Sophie. It is addressed: Mrs. Jarvis, 10 Waterloo Crescent Dover. It appears to have been mailed from St. John’s Wood. (I was surprised that it came from Great Britain originally.) The year is obscured on the postmark.

Notes like this, dropped in a mail that was picked up and delivered no less than two times a day, remind me of today’s email. Just a few lines – and you knew the recipient would receive it shortly. In Paris there was a system of pneumatic tubes which worked in conjunction with a staff of messengers well into the 1970’s. This fascinated me when I learned about it a few years ago. Faxes seemed to have skipped the more social aspect of communication, but email and IM have more than made up for it, except you don’t get the great postcard image with it.

Jenny Reed

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo postcard of this nicely turned out little girl with her cat attracted me in part because of the extreme patience on the part of that kitty. Clearly he is used to being held this way by his pint-sized mistress. The image is timeless, but her black button boots and fluffy dress take us back to the earliest part of the 20th century.  There is no date, however written on the back is the following: Jenny Reed and below in smaller writing but the same pen and hand, Lillie Peckwine Grand Daughter and at the bottom, same hand, but different pen, bernie (sic) Reed.

Somewhere my parents have a photo of me, wearing an old Snoopy sweatshirt age more or less 8, holding our cat – also named Snoopy – in approximately the same pose. I have mentioned Snoopy before – a boy-cat, white with black cow-spots – who was my introduction to cats. He was ever patient, both with me and the German Shepard, Duchess, and they were my constant companions who figured largely in my daily play world.

To Kim’s ongoing amusement I will occasionally pick Blackie up and carry him around this way and kiss the top of his head. He gets a slightly panicked look, but has learned to adjust to it and even purrs. Cookie, on the other hand, can be held for about 30 seconds in any position before a full fledged fear and flight set in. I shouldn’t do it to Blackie, but I guess I’m still a little girl at heart.

A Picture is Worth Many Words

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This film still is an odd, 5″x7″ size, came as part of a collection we amassed purchasing pieces off an artist photo archive being sold on eBay over a period of weeks, a few years back now. I believe it was a photo morgue assembled by an illustrator. Among the photos we purchased from that group was one I featured on an earlier post, Jes Call Me Bill. There are additional future posts to be had from that wonderful group of photos. There’s no information about this one and we haven’t been able to figure out what film it might have come from.

This photo was on my mind and I could not put my hands on it until recently while cleaning up and going through some photos given to us by a friend of Kim’s. This one had accidentally found it’s way into that pile. In part it is the composition that attracts me. I couldn’t ask for better. The light that is hitting the roof is great and there is just barely enough of it. The whole story is here – he’s pulling her into that thatched house against her will, the guy on the horse is covering him with a gun and looking off in one direction, but meanwhile, no one sees our hero coming out of the doorway. He’ll save her! Not really a beautiful photo so much as a good one. This is the beauty of both silent films and good photography. The picture grabs you – and gives you the whole story.

Fooled Again!

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Okay, time to admit it, if you are going to be a collector and take some chances, once in a while you are going to get burned – those are the rules of the game. A card that is suppose to be old is a reproduction, a stuffed toy is in poorer condition than advertised – it happens. In the process of doing a large buy on a postcard site, early one morning (think pre-coffee) I added this one into the batch, believing perhaps that the figure in the middle was actually wearing a Felix costume. Actually, don’t know what I was thinking. Once it arrived, it took a little while for me to even find the darn Felix!

Still, now that it is here, it is a strange and unusual card if not necessarily one I would have purchased otherwise. Roughly tinted, this shows an unusual line-up of men. There’s something decidedly gruesome about this group – um, not really jolly somehow. Perhaps it is the sloppy coloration. I don’t know – and the spirit of Felix, pasted to the window behind them, hovering over them.

Photographer

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I have a special fondness for photos of photographers and this woman with her camera in the woods seems like my spiritual sister. The location is exactly the kind I like to photograph – off in the woods, far away from all signs of human life. I love the camera she has and, although I am going out on a limb saying this, perhaps it is the kind used to make photo postcards? (Photography comrades, please feel free to weigh in on this.) I like that sporty camera case on the log next to her too. She’s very nip and tuck this woman. Although, while I happen to be a fan of dresses as comfortable and practical, I am not entirely sure I want to do rough hiking in this garb. Having said that, it is long and therefore should protect her legs, and hopefully full enough to permit movement. However, even I rarely wear my pearls for a hike in the forest!

This card is unused and not dated in anyway. From her clothes we will assume it is the early teens – again, if I was a bit better informed I could probably pinpoint based on her camera.  One of the things I love about the history of photography is the way it grew like topsy from Daguerre forward. Women are the beneficiaries of the emancipation brought on by such things as the wide availability of bicycles and avocations such as photography. These two things alone allowed them freedom of movement and a creative outlet beyond the more traditional painting, sewing and drawing. Voting is a fight and a few years away.

The development of photography seemed like a mad happy race for the next better thing – as did so much that was unrolling in the years before WWI – until the war and the influenza epidemic sent everyone reeling. Progress continues, but the wonderful innocent joy at it sadly seems to turn dark as applied to warfare and healthcare. However, she remains poised for the future here and whatever it brings.

Coney Island Airplane

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post:  The back of this card identifies it as a Coney Island Souvenir, but otherwise it is unused and not dated. Several that appeared to be from the same album were put up for sale at the same time, but oddly, this was the only really compelling image for me. (I would have thought they would all be sort of fun, wouldn’t you?) I do love this one – how perfect and goofy! I don’t know what I like best – the creative abstraction of the “airplane” or the wonderfully artificial scene painted at the bottom. (Are those real lights coming through the scenery? They seem to cast all the way upward when you look carefully – tiny searchlights.) Or perhaps the man himself, posing with a Harold Lloyd-like concentration and aplomb! He is so very nattily dressed – nothing like a man who wears a boater well.

It is an odd set up for photos. As Kim pointed out, airplanes changed so quickly at that time it must have gone out of date almost immediately. It would have been an of-the-moment craze however. A few moments of dreaming what it might be like to be up in the air. Of course, you could wander out and climb onto the roller coaster and get a good idea.

Mickey Mask

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Scan(5) copy 2

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Recently I was bidding on a rather fascinating Mickey Mouse mask from the thirties – an awkward thing, Kim seemed unmoved by it, but I found it very interesting. It doesn’t matter because it zoomed out of a price range that I could possibly justify paying – after all, it wasn’t even a cat. Still, almost by way of consolation, this photo appeared for sale on eBay – the man wearing the very type of mask I was bidding on.

While this can’t really compete with my past Mickey photo post Mickey Marches In it is still a pretty hot photo of the Mickey and Minnie dress up craze of the thirties. Halloween dressing up by adults seems, in general, to have been taken to a much higher level in the first part of the 20th century. That’s a pretty hot hula girl outfit behind the guy with the funny nose and the “S” or “5” on his pouch. And is that Little Miss Muffet and her Tuffet behind Minnie? I thought it was a turtle at first, but she seems very pleased with it either way. There’s a clown – there always is in these photos – and someone in a sort of raja outfit. Still, Mickey and Minnie are front and center and it has probably helped keep this photo bobbing around all these years instead of lost in an album somewhere.

If you look carefully, you will see that Mickey and Minnie seems to have a little wooden man on a wire like a leash. What on earth is that? And why are Mickey and Minnie taking him out and about? Their pet human perhaps – fitting for anthropromorphic mice I guess, not that I keep a mouse on a leash. This complements the dark side of this photo – after all, those masks are a bit terrifying.

Frozen Greetings

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Polar Bear and Waitresses

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Someone recently sent me an article about people posing with Polar bear imitators on Germany (see The Mysterious German Fad for Posing with Polar Bear Imitators) and I realized that this photo postcard probably belongs to this genre. Although I had long intended to write about this photo, an early one in my collection, I had not so I offer it as an almost snow day post. (As I write the east coast is getting buried under a couple of feet of snow in what they are saying is likely to be record breaking.)

It had never really occurred to me whether or not this postcard was German – I bought it many years ago and it has been framed for almost all that time. Closer examination shows part of a sign that, yes, could be in German. I unframed it and yes – low and behold – it is inscribed in German on the back. It is date 1950 and signed Maria. It was not mailed. The article seems to focus on one collector of these photos – so I guess I know who I can always sell mine to!

As we all know, I am not likely sell however and I have always prized this photo. I am not sure why, but in my mind it took place in a resort in the Catskills – go figure. I believe I stumbled onto this photo on eBay years ago – it was an early acquisition. But really, who wouldn’t want to snuggle up for a photo op with Mr. Polar Bear!