Tag: hats

Verneuil-le-Chétif, France

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“Procession at the cemetery of Verneuil-le-Chétif” (Sarthe, Pays de la Loire), France, November 2, 1920, by Roger Dumas, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.

The image is labeled “2 novembre,” but I wonder if it was actually taken the day before, on All Saints’ Day, a day for visiting family graves and leaving chrysanthemums.

This autochrome is one of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker and pacifist, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to fifty countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.

*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photo (A 24 573 X) is © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

Memory of a summer

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One of the terraces of Hotel Splendid (I believe), in the spa town of Châtel-Guyon, France, ca. 1900 – ca. 1910, via Vladimir Tkalčić on flickr (used under CC license).

The writing across the postcard says “Il y a une vingtaine d’années” — “Twenty years ago.” On the back is an undated note addressed to someone in Zagreb. The affixed stamp was issued in 1927.

Front steps, Finland

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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.)

A curious scene

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“Women and a child in a garden,” Tarn-et-Garonne, France, between 1880 and 1910, by Eugène Trutat, via Bibliothèque de Toulouse Commons on flickr.

Is the lady with the garden hose threatening the little girl with a shower if she doesn’t sit still for the photographer? An empty threat, almost certainly, since water would ruin those hats. (The young woman in the center does seem to be shrinking back a bit though.)

Uptown garden

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“Artist’s uptown residence,” New York City, ca. 1860, via Robert Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views, New York Public Library.

Detail from above image.

Upper Manhattan at this time was rapidly transforming from country to city — as villages and small farms became blocks of middle-class rowhouses. This backyard, with its neat latticed sitting area and then large cabbage garden, seems to encapsulate the change.

Detail.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the name of the artist or the address. Is he one of the two men in top hats sitting by the door, or was she standing in front of them, balancing a small boy on the fence — or maybe taking the picture?