Historic Images. By Alex Albion.

Historic Images ~ By Alex Albion.

Taken From Uncle Monty's

Photographic Collection.

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Old photographs are the record of people, events,

and times of the past. Photography has been around

for around 165 years now. Although around for only a

short period in terms of the totality of human history,

photography has nevertheless played a pivotal role in

recording almost every aspect of humankind since it

was first invented by Louis Daguerre (1767-1851) in

France and later taking photography to new heights

was America's Mathew Brady (1822-1896) during the

American Civil War. Brady travailed the battlefield

with his first "on site" photographic studio at where

his cameras and developing darkroom appeared

among the soldiers by horse drawn wagon!! Indeed,

Brady was the world's first war photographer and

who later died destitute despite having photographed

President Abe Lincoln himself and the Confederate

General Robert E. Lee, among many other important

mid-19th century Americans he recorded for posterity.

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Advent of Photography

http://www.fi.edu/pieces/myers/
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America's Pioneer Photographer

About Mathew Brady

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Princess Mary of Teck (1867-1953)

The above rare photo of the later to be Queen

Mary of England was taken circa 1895. Such is

among my rare photographic collection of

old British Royalty.
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French Trappist Monks, c. 1911.

Historic photographs of archbishops and religious figures has always fascinated me. I search high and low for such. The above sepia image of the Trappist monks, c. 1911, inside their own abbey, is one of my favourite since few old photographs can be found showing the interior activity of such monks. There are plenty of old photographs showing the outside view of churches and abbeys, but few show any religious activity or members of the religious order inside.
... British Bobbies tended to shy away, I suspect, from visiting their local photo studio or parlour to have themselves photographed in full uniform. I say that because the above historic image is the only one I have ever found or seen of such a British Bobby of 1919. Stiff and officious-looking was he, but that was the way so many photos were taken in those days as commercial or store front photographers tended to have little or no imagination when taking pictures of their paying customers. Dull studio props, boring background scenes, and standardised poses, left little for the imagination at the best of times. Such is certainly illustrated by our British Bobby here.
... At Havana, Cuba, c. 1908, is what I call a "live" photograph, since it was not posed or taken inside a studio but right out on the street, if you will. "Waiting to be shot. Adios!!!" is written under the unusual image showing humankind's thirst to kill each other either at war or for revenge or committing crime. I just wonder if the same person who took the above picture also photographed the same men after they had actually been shot dead? Photography has always brought us both the beauty and the beast, the brutality and the blessedness, and the barbaric and the bizarre, that has always been present in the composition and emotion of humankind from her earliest beginnings.
... The Zeppelin (or a large dirigible airship) shown in the distant background of this 1902 "Souvenir of Lille" was later added to the original image of the parading French Cavalry. It would otherwise be called "trick photography" or what I myself call "embellishment photography" that soon appeared in commercial photographic images at the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it has not stopped ever since. In fact, it has been part and parcel of commercial and advertising photography for years and years now. Some also call it "fake photography" in which the original image is deliberately altered - like taking, for example, the head off one person and then putting it on another person's body - for artistic or other reasons. Today, with Photoshop, almost anything is possible within the realm of photographic imagery and trickery.

^ Flu Epidemic in Britain, 1918. ^

If you thought modern Swine Flu is something new, well take a look at this 1918 photo of a British hospital "flu ward" that tell us it could spread fast again like the common flu did during the chronology of the First World War years from 1914-1919.
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The headline c. 1900 caption photo of Sir Hubert and Lady Gertrude Fitzroy-Cholmondley is accompanied by some comments from an old friend of their's, whose name isn't given, that adds even greater delight to the picture itself: "A rare photograph of two of my old friends from the early 1900s, with whom I holidayed in Morocco. I say "rare", because Sir Hubert was a deep-sea diver in the Royal Navy and was forever bringing work home with him. Gertude (or "Gertie" as she liked to be called) was forever complaining that at times she had thought of leaving him - well, would you sit at a dinner table, with your helmet on, eating through the aperture? Could he never take the damned thing off?" My answer is thank God he didn't at least when he was photographed, with his not so beloved Gertie, in his iconographic head gear and what is now such a marvellous photograph of the late Victorian English upper class!!
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In recent letters to The Times, a couple of them focussed on old photography. "The Penguin edition of Gordon Winter's A Country Camera 1844-1914 -has on the front cover a picture of Robert Morvinson who was 82 (in 1857) when he was photographed," wrote Nick Ratnieks. Thus, Mr. Marvinson then became the oldest person to be photographed in what is now one of the world's oldest photographic images. While another Times -letter from Libs Bailey stated: "It is rare to see anyone smiling in early photographs, not because they had a clamp round the back of their necks to keep them still but because what teeth they had left were black and chipped." Good point, Libs!! I also learned something I didn't know that folks had such a neck clamp to keep them still while being photographed. As they say, you learn something new every day!
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A few personal comments on modern photography:

To have and to use a digital or 35mm film-based camera doesn’t make one a true photographer. Everybody is an amateur shutterbug of some sort thesedays from young kids with their first digital camera to old gentlemen using their cameras like the old PRAKTICA. While the elite photographers and commercial pros still prefer their Hasselblad H System or their three-quarter format. Photographs are everywhere. Thus, such are now basically two a penny. Of the estimated one billion photographic images taken each year only a sackful or two of them will stand the test of time as great photographs and/or as important images to be preserved for all future time. Most photographs are rubbish and are taken like they’re rubbish to begin with.
Once a photograph has been taken, it becomes instant history the moment the camera shutter has done its job. And, ofterntimes it is then instantly forgotten in the rush to take yet another useless photograph. So, having a camera doesn’t make a photographer has I've already said. It only makes for little more than amatuer picture takers at best and at worst a disgrace to the worldwide profession of superb photography. Let me ask you then: How do you photograph a tree? Sounds like a stupid question, doesn't it? But it isn't!! Take 100 people, each with his or her own camera, to the same tree and then ask them individually to photograph it. Of the 100 folkz, perhaps 1 will have photographed the tree in some kind of creative or interesting manner. Most will have just photographed a tree as only a tree and nothing else. And, good photography doesn't stem from an expensive $5,000 camera system per se, but rather from the excellent eye and timing of a good photographer. Some of the best picture are taken by cheap cameras.

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As for old photographs and the ones shown herein under my "Historic Images," most were taken by anonymous photographers both of amateur and professional status of the early 20th century. Their anonymity can ironically add a sense of mystery to the old photograph itself at least for me. I am oftentimes puzzled about who the person was who actually took the photograph and wonder whatever happen to him. I say "him," because photography has been mostly a male-dominated profession since its earliest beginnings with such notable exceptions as found with America's most noted and first female news photographer Maragret Bourke-White (1904-1971), who led the way with her moving images of The Great Depression in "You Have Seen Their Faces." While much earlier in Britain, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) started photographing at the first onset of then primitive photography in Europe. Like males, women photographers are now commom place today. Good!

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When I selected the old pictures for this story, I selected them based not only on the age of when the photo was taken, but on the sheer contrast between the 7 images in my story. Of course, 7 old images is so tiny in number I would not dare to even suggest that they fully represent the historic records of old photography. Obviously, they're don't! Such here is then a mere little glimpse for the avid collector of historic images. Whatever may come of this short story, I hope most of all that it may wet the appetite of say just one person to start collecting such that can be found at car boot sales, old book shops, antiques shops, and even charity shops in England or at America's Thrift Shops, flea markets and antiques road shows in the states. Generally, collecting old photographs or photographic postcards is still relatively cheap compared to collecting other things like estate jewellery or say old coins and rare stamps. To pay only 50p or a dollar for something that is over 100 years old, then I think that's a bargain straight off. Old photographs can still be bought for that kind of silly price. But the key is to find the rare and unusual that will become more valuable as such becomes more rare over time. So collect not only for the beauty of the thing, but as a potential investment into the rare and esoteric things like old historic images.
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Have a G'day, Alex Albion.

+ St. Hyppolitus, 2oo9.

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