Front garden and steps, probably Finland, ca. 1900, by Hugo Simberg, via Finnish National Gallery on flickr (under CC license).
So much activity and anticipation in this shadowy old photo: the three women on the top left are waiting for the appearance of someone at the door. Below them, a toddler has been left to perch a little precariously on the steps. On the right, a woman with a very large hat and a little girl pose for the camera. Vines everywhere.
(There’s a larger view here.)
“In a courtyard, somewhere in France (undated),” a photo postcard by an unknown photographer, via pellethepoet on flickr (under CC license). You can click on the image for a larger view.
“Portrait of four girls and a man on a verandah,” Dubbo area, New South Wales, ca. 1915, by Edward Challis Kempe, via National Library of Australia Commons on flickr.
I wonder if those are scented geraniums in the planter on the left?
The Rev. E.C. Kempe was an amateur photographer and principal of the Brotherhood of the Good Shepherd at Dubbo from 1912 to 1915. The Good Shepherd was one of several “Bush Brotherhoods,” Anglican religious orders that sent traveling priests to thinly populated rural districts. “They were described as a ‘band of men’ who could ‘preach like Apostles’ and ‘ride like cowboys’,” according to Wikipedia. Kempe left behind an album of 157 photographs from his time in the bush.
“Mr. Garrity building a wading pool in the backyard for his children,” Yonkers, New York, 1942, by Arthur Rothstein for U.S. Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Little girl and grandmother (?) with hose, Detroit, Michigan, July 1942, by Arthur S. Siegel for U.S. Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (both photos).
enclos*ure 