This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Sabine Ocker, a photo collector and photo historian with over 500 snapshot albums in her collection. 

The two dive into cyanotypes as a popular format with young women attending one of the 7-sister colleges, as well as their shared love of the cyanotype process, and Sabine’s collection of women’s cyanotype snapshot albums. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 196: Early Color Photos and More: The American Museum of Photography 

Episode 193 Stereographs with Pascal Martine

Links:

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• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Sabine Ocker began collecting photos 20 years ago, initially focusing on snapshot albums, especially those between the period 1890-1920.  She was drawn to women’s photograph albums as they give insights into what life was like for women during that time period. Today She owns about 500 snapshot albums. 

She’s presented her research at the George Eastman House and the Photo Historical Society of New England and has contributed articles on 19th-century photographic processes to publications, journals, and newsletters. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo-related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 204: Many Shades of Blue: Cyanotypes with Sabine Ocker appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

In February 2016, the International Center of Photography posted a lovely tintype album from their collections in their blog. You can view it here.

You know where I’m going. I contacted them to see if I could help.   The album’s had a rough life. Pages are ripped, photos are missing, random scribbles appear on some pages, and the photos…well they’ve been touched a few times but these gorgeous images depict primarily prosperous African Americans from the late 1860s through circa 1900. The young woman (to the left) likely posed in the late 1870s to early 1880s.

Analyzing a photo album is a lot like the game of baseball. The pitches and hits are places where it’s possible to put the clues together to get a home run, i.e., an identification. As you’ll read, the more strikes a pitcher throws the opposing team, the less likely his opponent will win the game.

Proving the Provenance

The first step in identifying who’s who in an album is assessing the history of ownership. The common problem is that this information is often lost. Antique dealers don’t usually keep track of who sold the album or even where it was from. Even if the dealer knows some of the details they may not be the first seller of the article.   You guessed it: no one knows anything about this album.   Strike one.

There is one clue. On the inside of the front cover, someone wrote “Lizzie ***an album.” The asterisks represent illegible letters. If only that handwriting were legible, then we might have had a chance to hit that pitch.

Who’s on First?

Not the base, or even an Abbot and Costello comedy routine, but who’s on the first page of the album. It might be a child, a husband, a parent, or sometimes the owner of the album. That’s usually a clue to who created the picture order. Unfortunately, there are no images on pages one or two of this album. Strike two.

Pages of Clues

Many of the pages of this small 1860s style leather-covered album contain handwritten initials on the pages, some with pictures and others without. The initials are found either above or below the images or where the images WOULD be. There is also a group of loose tintypes stuck in the back of the album. It’s possible that the same initials referred to the same person but the missing images plus those taken out of the sequence complicate the identification. That this is a family album is clear. There are multiple images of the same person sprinkled throughout the pages. Looking at all the pictures side by side reveals a family resemblance between older and younger women. They have similar eyes and noses. Perhaps they are mother and daughter.

The final page of the album is missing its photo. Directly above the opening where the tintype should be are the initials “M L W” and above that is written Mrs. T.C. Hoodenpyle. Since most of the images date between 1860 and 1880, I did a general search of the 1870 Federal Census for T. Hoodenpyle. There is a T.J. Hoodenpyle who lived in Sequatchie, Tennessee. Could this be the one clue that links all the other photos? Perhaps the C is a reversed J. The missing picture could hold the clue to who’s who in this curious album.

According to a more general search for Hoodenpyles in the 1870 Federal Census, there weren’t that many individuals with that unusual surname in the census. That’s the fun part of a less common name. It’s more likely to find what you’re seeking, unlike a search for Smith or Brown. All of the matches in the census claimed white as their race. They all lived in the following places: Kent, Michigan; Dent, Michigan; Bledsoe, Marion, and Sequatchie, Tennessee; and Washington, Warren, and Limestone, Texas.

The only other name clearly written above another blank page is “McGruder. The surname is preceded by what seems to be the word “faster”, possibly a nickname. There may be a cross match between McGruders and Hoodenpyles that would support where these individuals lived. A search of the 1870 Federal census resulted in many hits for McGruder, however I found no overlap with any of the exact locations in the previous search for Hoodenpyle. It appears this album contains images taken in many places.

Studio Clues

Most of the images are tintypes with no paper mats. This means they lack any photographer information. Only two the images contain a photographer’s name: E.W. Mealy of Grand St. Monroe, Louisiana and W.F. Simpson (no place name).

Mealy appears in the 1870 Federal Census of Louisiana as a photographer but, by 1880, he’s calling himself an artist. The image dates from circa 1870.

Simpson is a harder name to track. It’s a common name. The photo is a small card photograph of a Caucasian looking man with a name possibly of James Den***. Is this really his name? Someone has used the rest of the card to practice their handwriting, so we can’t be 100% certain. The style of the card, the photographer’s imprint, and his clothing date this image to the 1860s.

There are three W.F. Simpson’s in the 1870 Federal census living in Maryland, Indiana and Tennessee, but none are photographers. It could be that Simpson was a photographer in the 1860s but, by 1870, had given up that trade. Estimating that his first name was William turns up a larger number of matches, but none are photographers. Despite the identity of one photographer at work in Louisiana, there is no indication that all the pictures were taken there. And factor in that the post-Civil War period was a time of migration for African American communities.

We may have finally come to strike three.

Mixed up Mess

My initial read of the album gave me a theory, but I needed to study all the pages to test it. Yes, it is strike three.   These pictures are mixed up. They were removed, then put back in random places.

Here’s my revised theory. Somewhere along the line either family removed the pictures of their beloved relatives OR these images were so lovely, they could be sold separately. Either one is a possibility. Sadly, the life of this album has made positive identification of its inhabitants tantalizingly difficult.

If you have a photo album you’d like to know more about, send me the details at photodetective @maureentaylor.com.

The post Trouble in a Tintype Album: Reading the Clues appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Sounded great. Sort by category. Feel the joy or discard the rest.

She was fired up about how tidy her house looked and how she felt without the mess. Until she go to the part where she had to deal with her family photos. Not just the ones she’d taken, but those handed down for generations. Each picture brought back a memory and an emotion.

She struggled with getting rid of those precious items and asked me what to do.

There’s organizing information for everyday contemporary photo albums and then there’s advice for historic pictures. They’re not the same thing so the advice on caring for them should be different.

This recent organizing trend encourages folks to clean up their stuff tossing almost everything including photos.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for downsizing. I’ve done it myself. But when a multi million dollar-organizing expert tells her readers that “the correct method is to remove all your photos from their albums and look at them one by one” I have to speak up. no. No. NO.

This mega organizer doesn’t differentiate between your vacation albums and the ones put together by your ancestors. I’m sure she’d thinking about all those contemporary albums (digital and real) we’ve compiled, but she doesn’t clarify her advice for family history photos. Would you really toss pictures of great uncle Ben?

I believe that ever picture tells a story and a photo albums tells a tale of a person’ life.

One of my missions is to save those stories. Those images give us a connection to our past.

By sharing those pictures with our children we’re reinforcing family connections. In a disconnected world where family rarely lives next door, those images become valuable icons of who we are and why.

It’s time to rescue those historic albums from the current “too it” organizing mentality. Be a hero, save a family history picture or a whole album.

Touching the Past

Think about how you feel when you sit down with a photo album. If you’re like most people there is an instant connection with the person who took time to put it together.

By touching the pages and viewing the images, you know who and what was important to them. The paper feels different. They’re heavier and more substantial than a snapshot. And those old images come in all sizes–from tiny tin pictures to large card stock cabinet cards. Snapshots too. Blue, beige gold toned, and purple hued images stare out at you.

They beg you to answer the question: Who are these people?

We live in an image-based world surrounded by people taking pictures of every moment. For our ancestors, a visit to a photo studio usually marked a special occasion. Even candid pictures from the 1920s documents the everyday life of your great grandparents. They are pictorial moments worth treasuring.

Here are a few pieces of advice for dealing with albums old and new.

Your Albums: Weed the Present

We take more photos in one year than all the pictures ever taken in the 19th century. That makes the ones taken by your ancestors more special than that tenth shot you took of the Grand Canyon last year. Weed out of your own collection all those multiple shots of the same location. Choose special ones to save for your descendants.

Great Aunt May’s Albums: Save Them

Don’t touch those older bookish looking albums and those on black paper. They’re fine the way they are. Removing all those pictures usually damages the aged album pages, too.

And by taking them apart (as suggested by Ms. Kondo), you lose track of what goes where and destroy the context of the story contained in those images.

Who’s depicted? Who’s not? The placement of each picture in the album provides clues to the relationship of the person in the photo to the person who compiled the album.

A person I know took apart a black paper album to see if anything else was written on the back. (There was nothing there.) In their desire to see if their ancestor had written names on the back, the pictures got jumbled.

They didn’t photograph the pages first to be able to put it back together, so all the photos ended up in a pile and stayed there.

Laster, they found their aunt had kept a diary to go with the album. Together the album and the diary chronicled her travels as a young woman. Unfortunately the pile of pictures and the diary no longer fit together. Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again.

An Old School Toxic Combination

Unless you’re drowning in vacation photo albums, the only ones that really need to be taken part are the toxic creations sold beginning in the 1970s. Labeled as “magnetic,” they consist of poor quality paper, plastic, and glue.

Those gummy glue stripes or sticky pages grip onto pictures, leave behind yellow stains, and won’t cry uncle and let go. There are special techniques to remove those pictures safely. You’ll learn about them in my Essential Photo Organizing course. 

For now, put them aside with the intention that you’ll deal with those later.

Leave Them a Legacy

Take time to think about the photographic legacy you’re leaving your descendants. Pick significant images from your life and do what Great Aunt May did, put them in an album.

Give your heirs a picture story to cherish. By doing so, you’ve gotten rid of unnecessary stuff (the point of all good organizing advice), but kept the best for the future. Great Aunt May would be proud.

The post The life-changing magic of tidying up is wrong! (And What you should do instead.) appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Mid-nineteenth century photo albums often resembled bibles.These nineteenth century albums evolved from scrapbook pages to pre-cut albums back to scrapbooks.

As albums lost their formality and amateur photography became popular, albums became a form of personal expression. These albums portrayed family unity and revealed a personal identity. Albums, with their imaginative arrangements, decorative cutouts, and artifacts, are the predecessors of the contemporary scrapbook.

One of the most often asked questions at my presentations on family photographs is what to do with images that are in albums. The first suggestion is to follow the basic rules for extending the longevity of any photographs by placing them in an area that does not experience variable temperature and humidity.Conservators suggest keeping the album in its original state unless it is extremely damaged.

If your album has been extremely damaged, Preserving your Family Photographs details suggestions for possible restoration. Essential Photo Organizing, devotes an entire session to caring for family photo albums.

The post Photographic Albums appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

While I don’t advise taking apart family photo albums, when confronted with a magnetic one it’s a different story. Purchase a new album with acid and lignin free pages and non-pvc polyester overlay then carefully remove all your images from that nasty magnetic one and recreate the order of the images on new pages.

I know..the next question is “How do I remove them?” You can gently slide a piece of dental floss between the image and the page or you can purchase a microspatuala from a library supplier and try using that to remove the images. Just be careful. It is possible to tear a photo with the floss or the spatula.

Make me a promise. No more magnetic photo albums, no matter how cheap they are on sale. Stick with the good stuff. Look for acid and lignin free models with polyester overlays. They will last.

The post Ask Maureen: What’s the Worst Photo Album? appeared first on Maureen Taylor.