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Fantastika!: SF & The Weird: Wonderful (and weird!) old photographs

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      CommentAuthorJess
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.1)
    I come across strange old photographs at least once a week that, in my mind anyway, are worth sharing. This is one I found a few minutes ago, as I was leafing through an 1893 volume of St. Nicholas Magazine:



    Context:
    Apparently, this is a photograph of a play put on at Vassar College celebrating the end of a trigonometry class.


    I have many more I can share if people are interested. Any of you ever find good things like this?
    • CommentAuthorStefanJ
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.2)
    There's a great site, www.shorpy.com, that puts up 4-5 old photos each day. Ranging from the site author's childhood to the freaking Civil War.

    In a few cases, commentators have posted modern-day images, or Google street views, of the buildings in the photos.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJess
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.3)
    That's a pretty amazing site. Going to have to keep my eye on that.
  4.  (5821.4)
    Tabernacle

    Found this on Portobello Market a few years back. There was a little note attached that said Tabernacle, so I'd assume it is just that.
    • CommentAuthorJigsy Q
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.5)
    There's a few vintage porn sites in existence. Nothing funnier than a pic of a guy with a big handlebar moustache getting a blowie.

    One of my favorite historical oddities was the Boynton Bicycle Railroad, a very early attempt at a monorail. It had double-decker cars and ran on a single track. It was test driven in Coney Island in 1889 and even ran regular service to Coney Island for one season in 1890.

    • CommentAuthorPooka
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.6)
    I recently went to my grandmother's 90th birthday party. they had a slideshow of alot of old family photos, of her, her parents, and her grandparents. What was really interesting is that they were taken on the same land that my grandmother lives on now.
    I might get a copy of the pics soon. If I do I'll post them...
    •  
      CommentAuthorJess
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009 edited
     (5821.7)
    The University of Washington has a searchable archive of photos: http://content.lib.washington.edu/index.html

    An amusing sample: Staged glacier accident.
  8.  (5821.8)
    My favorite old photograph. My Great Aunt Frances' wedding. I'd never known she was married, as throughout my life she lived as a spinster in the apartment above her sister and her sister's husband. Seems the handsome devil left but three months after the wedding, and being a dutiful Catholic that didn't believe in divorce, my Aunt just... wasted away. The faces on every person involved here has such... CHARACTER. I love it:

    Frances' wedding


    And to know the future that will follow, it makes my heart break when I look at this beautiful image:

    Frances bride


    this one is amazing to me because I'm 95% sure it's taken in Fair Lawn NJ, which is a father urban area now and right next to Paterson, which is... well.... a cesspool:

    großpapa-großmama- kids


    For that same reason, I love this image, because it's taken, as most of my grandmother's family photos had been taken, in Paterson, NJ:

    Grotecloss front


    Here's that address now:

  9.  (5821.9)
    creepy Communion picture

    communion

    Mom at Easter

    easter mom

    Great (great?) Grandfather at World War One?

    Andreas Susen (?) front
    ( and the back)

    Uncle

    uncle kevin pretty
  10.  (5821.10)
    My wife was doing some research on Post Mortem photography, there's been a resurge in it recently to help with the loss of new born babies, and apparently it was a common practise in Victorian times.

    so google image search Victorian Post Mortem Photography and you get tons of awesome old images, like these:

    (note, at least one person in the photos is dead)





  11.  (5821.11)
    also, just thought, the first image there, the girl is probably a lot clearer/not blurry 'cause of the longer exposure times they had for cameras in those days, and the fact that she wouldn't have been moving that much...
    •  
      CommentAuthormister hex
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.12)
    Awesome.

    I have a picture of the Oakville Baseball Club, 1905. (My great-grandfather played for them.) Sadly, I have no scanner. But I'm working on that.
    •  
      CommentAuthorMShades
    • CommentTimeMay 11th 2009
     (5821.13)
    My great-grandmothers:

    Great-grandmother May
    My father's mother's mother, May, from 1912.

    Great-grandmother Sadie
    My mother's father's mother, Sadie, from the 30s. It's permanently affixed to this tiny tin frame....

    I think both of those looks need to come back in style....
    •  
      CommentAuthorbjacques
    • CommentTimeMay 12th 2009 edited
     (5821.14)
    @mister hex: If you have a digital camera, you can rephotograph old photos if the light is good.

    @RachaelNoel: The really old photo is from between 1910 and 1915. It's hard to make out the insignia on the Pickelhaube helmet, but it looks like the Prussian eagle. I have a few similar photos and I used this German military uniforms site to identify some of my photos.

    I collect stuff like this all the time, and have a huge backlog of putting it online. Creative Commons, natch.

    Scanned from a glass negative from a collection I bought at a flea market. Turns out they were photos of a family named Grandel, from Clamart, just outside Paris. The collection includes stereoviews, plus some photos of army exercises in (I think) September 1894 and some pix a few years later in Kowloon. On the left is Marie-Félicité Josephine (1880? - 1950), age about 16.
    Balcony, Marie-Félicité, cousin, 1895? (3)


    Zeppelins!! The Hindenburg flying eastward over Amsterdam, 26 June 1936, taken a few minutes apart. Click to embiggen, to see the people running outside or leaning out their windows for a better view.
    Hindenburg over the Brouwersgracht, Amsterdam Hindenburg over the Brouwersgracht, Amsterdam

    Aaannnd...
    A tobacco ad come to life! Paris Colonial Exposition, 1931, early June, photographer unknown but attached to a Dutch motorcoach tour. Outside the Dutch pavilion, which burned down in late June, Indonesian lads take a smoke break. Javaanse Jongen (Javanese Boy) was and is a popular pouch tabacco in the Netherlands, so a photo like this was obligatory.
    219. Real live Indonesians!
    •  
      CommentAuthorJess
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2009 edited
     (5821.15)
    @bjacques -- Glass negatives are wonderful finds. I'm jealous.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJustLaina
    • CommentTimeMay 14th 2009
     (5821.16)
    @MShades -- I love that first photo. The mixture of black/white and color-- awesome.
  17.  (5821.17)
    These are really cool! I should dig up some of my oldies, USSR had hilarious photographers. The Sad Bride In Dressing Table Mirror pose had a like twenty-yar renaissance...
  18.  (5821.18)
    I love these old photographs. The PostMortem photos would be eerie if you didn't know the subject matter, but the one with young lady in the middle is mildly hypnotising due to the clarity with which she appears next to her companions.
    @RachealNoel Theres a resemblance between you and the lady on the absolute left in your group wedding photo. I love the chap in the middle, he has something afoot in his mind.
    •  
      CommentAuthorindysleaze
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2009
     (5821.19)
    @RachelNoel

    Wonderful pics but you just know that your great (great?) grandfather would have shot your uncle quite dead.
    •  
      CommentAuthorbjacques
    • CommentTimeMay 15th 2009
     (5821.20)
    @Jess:

    Glass negatives are not that hard to find. Interesting ones are.

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