The Finest in Vintage Photography Since 2005
Photographs and occasional ephemera of American life in the 20th century.
Yesterday I picked up a small but interesting lot of negatives (with a few snapshots mixed in) from the estate of a young man from Kentland, Indiana in the late 1910s/early 20s. Several of the negatives had been painted over in order to vignette the subject and one actually had a a figure cut out and glued directly to the negative itself. All in all a nice little set and a welcome addition to my collection. You can see them all here.
Continuing the religious theme from yesterday I thought I’d put together an album of some of my favorite religion-themed photos. Just over 100 pics- from the sanctified to the ridiculous and back again. Click here to see them all.
To get you ready for Easter weekend I thought I’d give you a little slice of life from a hardcore evangelical store front church in South L.A. (the neighborhood of Florence to be exact) in the early 70s. As L.A. legend Charles Mingus said, Better Git It in Your Soul! Click here to get sanctified.
It’s late September 1942 and Marvin Mischnick is in the army and stationed in Los Angeles. Late one Saturday night (actually early Sunday morning) while out with some friends Marvin spots an attractive young lady (one Mildena Bates), chases her down and introduces himself. They go to a bar where they have a beer, kiss and then head to the movies where they make out some more. How do I know all this? Because in 1946 Marvin returned to L.A. and photographed all of the places they went that night and many other places where they spent time during his time in L.A. There are also shots of the spot where they got engaged and multiple locations where they made “passionate married love” after they moved to Chicago. It’s an amazing record of their relationship as well as a great look at downtown L.A. in the mid-40s. Click here to see them all.
p.s. Spoiler Alert: Sadly the last photo in the series is the last photo I have of them together. It was taken on Thanksgiving Day in 1947in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. But by 1948 (as far as I can tell from my rudimentary googling) Mildena was back in L.A. while Marvin remained in Chicago and became a commercial photographer. He died in 2018 at the ripe old age of 99 and his obituary (which might be as good as the photos themselves) makes no mention of Mildena whatsoever.
H.C. Witmer of Juda, Wisconsin may not have had a thousand faces but he had at least eleven. Click here to see the entire set of eleven hand-tinted CDVs dated 1887.
I’m closing out Black History Month with a third gallery- This one containing 100 photo booth pics from my collection. See them all here.
To continue my Black History Month posts I’ve put together a large gallery of nearly all of my African-American real photo postcard collection- nearly 200 in all. Click here to see them all.
Last summer I picked up a large lot of postcard sized glass negatives, many damaged, at an antiques market in Wisconsin. There were about 120 in all and they all appear to be the work of the same photographer who initialed some of the photos G.R.M. Given the size and subject matter of the photos my guess is he was a professional (or at least semi-professional) photographer specializing in postcard photographs in and around South Dakota. I think this lot was a mix of his professional work and personal photographs. I’ve scanned about 50 for your viewing pleasure- see them all here.
In honor of Valentines Day I’ve added a new gallery of (mostly) romantic pics- see them all here.
