Being a Professional Photographer.......in 1902
On a recent trip to the Hocking Hills region in Southeastern Ohio, we spent a rainy day in Lancaster. Lancaster is an interesting town full of history, shops, and restaurants…..along with a park called “Rising Park” on Mt. Pleasant that has fantastic views of the city.
The view of Lancaster, Ohio from Rising Park, Fall 2022
While in Lancaster, we stopped in a huge antique store called “The Old Shoe Factory”, which, as you’d guess by its name, was at one time a shoe factory. It has nearly 60,000 square feet of antiques on 3 floors. We spent a few hours in there, and on the 2nd floor I ran across a dusty box of glass slide negatives, most of them in 5” x 7” size. Some of the images peaked my interest when holding the negatives up to the light, so I decided to plunk down the $18 asking price and take it home to scan.
The box had a piece of tape on the side that said “1902 Assignments - Box #4 of 58”. This leads me to believe this was a working photographer who also happened to be fairly good at organizing his work. Unfortunately, there was no name on the box so I have no idea who the photographer was. But, it is interesting to take a look at his/her work today, just to get an idea of what it was like being a professional photographer back in 1902.
The first two slides that I scanned are architectural shots of the same building. As you can see, the photographer mostly nailed it on the first image, but the second image has some horizon issues and isn’t compositionally great. You can also see that the photographer was using a lens that had an image circle that was just a little too small for the 5x7 negative. I’m assuming that they were aware of this, and had planned to crop the image when printing in the darkroom.
A little Google research tells me that this was the old City Building in Bellaire, Ohio. It appears that the building is no longer there, and I don’t know when it was torn down or why. But it does tell me that the photographer was indeed from the Southern Ohio area, or at least worked there.
The postcard image of the building that I found online looks to be from the same era, and, almost looks like it could be the same guys standing out front that are in the first image. Could this postcard have been the work of the same photographer?
Another thing that these images show is what the photographers had to work with back in the day. Film was slow, like around ISO 1. That meant everything was on a tripod, and taking a picture was a slow, methodic process. Images took seconds, if not minutes, of open shutter time. That meant that anything that moves in the scene is a blur. Just like the horse and buggy in the first image.
The image above was also in the box, and did not fair as well over time as many of the others. It appears to be a view of Bellaire, Ohio as well, possibly looking North on 34th Street. Most of the buildings aren’t there anymore. This was taken with a wider lens than the first two images, that also had a larger image circle that covered the entire negative.
The next two images above appear to be for Graduation or possibly First Communion. For milestones, families would often hire professional photographers to capture the event. Having your image taken in 1902 was an expensive luxury - one that many families could not afford. The boy in the left image stood decently still, but his head moved ever so little causing some softness in the image. And what’s going on with that wallpaper that looks like scary dolls?
Family Portraits - the 3 images above were family portraits of different families. These are interesting to click on and look at the dress and the expressions of the family members. You can see who moved, and who didn’t. Check out the babies in the second image - they are definitely NOT sitting still. One thing that you notice here is that skin tones can look a little dark, especially in that 3rd image. I would imagine this was taken during late summer or early fall, when people had a little more color in their faces. Film back in the day was orthochromatic — meaning that it didn’t see red, and was more blue sensitive. That means anything that has red in it, like skin tones, can be dark. That also means that the black clothing you see here could also have been red.
In the second image, you can see that the boys on the left have on ball uniforms that say “Spencer”. Spencer is a small, rural town just West of Akron, Ohio. So this photographer got around a little bit, or this was a family gathering somewhere else with members from various places in Ohio.
Kids - this image above was not a 5x7, but rather a “half-sheet” of 7x2.5 glass. This was shot outside in decently bright light, but the exposure would have still been a few seconds. I’m not certain what was said by someone right before this image was taken, but the boys on the left look somewhat horrified and the girls look amused. This is probably my favorite shot of the images that were in the box, and it makes me think of being a kid and watching the “Little Rascals”.
Portraits - the two images above show your typical portraits of the day. The baby on the left actually sat decently still for the few seconds it took to make the image. Probably because mom is under that big white skirt holding her still.
The other image is a bit weird in nature. The person behind the seated young man has their head cut off, as if for some reason they weren’t important (?). Maybe there were there only to hold the subject in the chair steady? If you look closely at the seated person, they have what looks like burn damage to the left side of their face. I’m not certain what’s going on here but it is a little “off”.
Record shots - the two images above are what I would call “record shots”, done just to record or copy something. The left image is a photograph of a painting, that was shot with a flash or a bright light from a window. I would imagine that the client wanted a copy or record of this painting since there was probably only one of them in existence, and this gave them a more “portable” copy if it was printed. The image on the right I think is a record shot of flower arrangements from a funeral, wedding, or some other event. The hastily nailed-up black cloth in the background, and the water running out of the flowers on the right side, make me think this wasn’t any sort of staged, artistic still life.
So that’s it! All of the images that were in the box are in this post. I had a lot of fun scanning them and thinking about the how’s and why’s of the images. Have you ever purchased a set of old glass negatives? Or do you have some laying around from family members back in the day? It’s worth dusting them off and scanning them, if only to get a glimpse of the past.
Thanks for reading,
Jeremy
