When I spend time scanning photos, or cleaning and repairing them, I have the honour of spending time in that moment. I look beyond the people, or the place. I start to notice the little things. The jewellery they're wearing, the shine on their shoes, the leaves starting to turn on that tree in the distance, the farm tool leaning on the fence behind them. Occasionally the expression on the persons face is so vivid, it makes me wonder what they were thinking, how they were feeling, wonder what they were looking at on the other side of the lense.
The one thing I love to do is to notice all those little things, and to use them to solve other mysteries.
I'll give you an example, albeit an innocuous one. Take this picture, a seemingly simple, almost mundane photo of my brother, taken around 1968.
Ya ya, I know - he was a cute kid. I looked just like him, only cuter, dontcha know ?
Where was the photo taken ? My first guess is at my Grandma & Grandpa Lathems, which I confirm looking at the large vent on the floor in relation to that door opening. But aside from the cute subject and location, what else can I learn ?
This side shows me two things. First, the armed table chair in the background ? That chair is currently sitting in my dining room. Not remarkable news, it's just kind of neat to spot things like that in old photos.
Now look at the large upholstered chair in the foreground. That detail helped me confirm the location of a photo I have of my Dad, taken around the time he left for university. Comparing details of photographs, even though they're taken years apart, is one of the biggest clues to solving photographic mysteries.
This area of the photo provides me with alot of information:
First, at a high resolution I can clearly read the main headline of the newspaper lying under this table. It's the Toronto Star sports section, and the headline reads "Smile when you say that (Mister?)". Using that detail, and checking out the Toronto Star's online archives, I could determine the actual date of this photograph.
(Toronto Star Archives are easy to search, at fairly reasonable rates. Right now you can search 1945 free of charge.)
This newspaper would suggest, although not confirm 100%, that my Dad was in town when the photo was taken. (My grandparents were avid newspaper readers, although I'm not sure their level of interest in sports in particular.)
Then there's the table itself:
Same table, discovered in the basement during the great cleanup of 2010, unfortunately it did not withstand the flooding all that well.
Now, what's on top of that table in the photo ?
First, the figurines. The horse on the left is an old tin wind-up horse, made in "Imperial Japan". I found the toy itself in the cleanup of 2010 too. Upon closer examination, we believe it was originally my Dad's, which would date it in the 1940's, maybe 1950's. A tin wind-up horse very similar to this, with slightly more paint remaining recently sold on Ebay for $348 to a collector in the US.
A quick bit of research suggests that while most "windup" tin toys were originally made in Germany, around the end of the 19th century Japan took advantage of the malleable metal, and started to develop sophisticated tin printing and punching machines. They were able to start capturing an even bigger share of the tin-toy market, thus their prevalence in North America in the mid 1900's. Of course production of the toys stopped during WWII, as both the metal and factories were devoted entirely to the war effort. Following the end of the war, under American occupation, the Japanese factories began producing the windup toys again. General MacArthur encouraged low-profit, high-labour industries such as toy making in Japan, and once again the market was flooding with them.
Old toys are fascinating sources of information on the past. I've rescued quite a few from my grandparents home, which I may discuss at some point in the future when I've had a chance to do some research on them.
The ceramic figuring also survived the cleanup of 2010, and is among a series of ceramic figurines - most with a humorous or comical slant - currently occupying a box in my parents home. They're among the things I *should* part with, but every time I glance at them, they bring a smile to my face, and I put them back in the box on the shelf.... (we won't discuss the number of boxes of things I have that fall into that category)
Fast forward to another photo, this time from 2012:
Yes, it's the same Singer sewing machine, still in perfect working order. I'm hoping to give it a home in my future "crafting and family history preservation" room, currently in the works.
And there you have it. While I did know the history of some of those items, seeing them in that photograph helped me place them - geographically, and historically. It gave me a better idea of where they may have originated, who they belonged to at a specific time, and what they might have meant to the family in some context. Using this method has also helped me figure out who various people are in a photo, where or when the photo was taken, or even the event at which it was taken.
Take a look at your photos with a different eye next time, and you may be surprised what you discover.
