photo collage

Mickey and Felix Costumes, Part 1

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Mysterious applications of Mickey and Felix as costumes really could be their own category! Starting with this is a tiny photo which really defies easy explanation – someone dressed as a long-nosed, slightly off-model (paunchy) Mickey on skies or snow shoes.  Hard to imagine what was going on here, or that he remained standing long.

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Back of card reads (complete with lack of punctuation):

Mrs. W Stoodley
Folly Farms
Lovewkerne (?) Som

mother
am glad it is much cooler now but our place is cooler inside than out.  The children had their carnival yesterday but this is the one.  Will

This Felix costume is much jollier and a lot more sensible – as such.  I’m sure he raised a lot of money for them. In fact, so much, that they did it more than once!

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This card features stuffed Felix dolls for the action – mine of this type is posted too so you can get a better look – irresistible to put these together – another example of rather brilliant photo collage work.  Nothing on the back of this card so we don’t know which came first.  They were purchased separately over the course of several years and the seller of this card said he had never seen anything like it.  I sent him a scan of the other – both of these came from British sellers.  I say Hooray for Felix!

Flapper Page – Photo Album Continued

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Shortly after my cat photo collage post (August 10) I found this interesting page on eBay and decided to stretch a point and buy it – no cats, but a sort of wonderful glimpse into what was likely a young woman’s life in the twenties. It is a small page, less than 8×10 – so each image is quite tiny. I am wondering which, if any, might be the owner of the album and page maker – maybe the girl with the fur collar and pearls at the top in the middle? Or the one with the hat above her? Blurry photos were not beneath use in their place, see lower left – and the line of legs and shoes at the bottom is what really does it for me. Were these showing off the new shorter skirts of the day? Or just the fashionable shoes – or both?

When I posted the other one someone speculated on how attempts at making contemporary collages never have the same charm. I tend to agree, although I think it is more difficult than it looks and you need a good eye for it. I also believe that there’s something to it being a less cynical time – no striving for irony and a sense of real wonder and fun with the availability of the new medium of photography.

(I just realized that you can’t blow this up unless you drag it to your desktop – please do and have a good look!)

Cat Photo Collage

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Pam Photo Post:  Early cat comics?

I have long been interested in the period where the carefully arranged photo album page morphs into these photo collages done with negatives and artful printing.  I was very excited about an exhibit a few years ago, Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, which originated at the Chicago Art Institute (’09) and made a stop here in New York at the Met.  (The catalogue is still available, for a price, on Amazon.)  It was an amazing opportunity to see the best of these, many featuring skilled watercolor and ink drawings, most often executed by woman. However, there is a lot to be said for the less spectacular examples too. Just look at these hard-working kitties on the USS Mississippi!

To date this is the only one in my collection and the only cat one of this kind I have ever seen, despite some pretty thorough ongoing scouring. You do find the whole, elaborate collages reproduced on Victorian or later period cards, and I have seen a number of cat themed ones that way. While I have been tempted by early albums and whole pages from albums, I tend to think my limited storage is not the best home for these fragile artifacts, but I do find them fascinating – windows into whole lost worlds.  Of course, if one devoted to cats came along I assume I would change my mind!