The Both children and mother outside their home and cottage garden at Slave* Lake, Ontario, Canada, ca. early 1960s, via Cloyne and District Historical Society Commons on flickr.
*Probably named for the Slave or Awokanak Native Americans of the region.
“Lady Elisabeth’s Rose Garden, Lacock [Abbey], England,” early 1840s, by William Henry Fox Talbot, via Museum of Photographic Arts Commons on flickr (both photos).
Lady Elizabeth Fox-Strangways Feilding was the photographer’s mother.
Talbot was one of the early fathers of photography. He developed the paper negative and the process of permanently fixing photos on chemically treated paper.
This is the body of light. . . .
— Ronald Johnson, from “BEAM 30: The Garden“
My first “Sunday porch,” from August 2013. . .
Strawberry Hill plantation, Greene County, Alabama, in 1939, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The front porch is often a box seat for the theater of the garden or the street. This one seems to have half drawn its curtains against the buzzing, chirping action of the cottage garden below.
The mid-19th century house still exists, although without the vines and flowers. Its surrounding land is now a cattle ranch.
“Calvert Richard Jones (on the right), with six women, a man, boy, girl and dog, standing and sitting in a colonnaded porch way,” probably Swansea, Wales, ca. 1860, via National Library of Wales Commons on flickr.
Jones was a member of Swansea’s wealthly, landowning elite. He studied mathematics at Oxford and was ordained as an Anglican priest, but spent much of his time traveling and painting. Like many men and women of his class in the Swansea area from the 1840s to the early 1860s, he was a photography enthusiast. In 1841, he took a daguerreotype that is now the earliest accurately dated photograph in Wales.
The photo may include Mrs. Jones (Portia Smith) and one or more of their three daughters.
A view from the summer house at Oatlands, Loudoun County, Virginia, in the 1930s, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Oatlands Plantation was established in 1798 by a member of Virginia’s prominent Carter family. In 1903, it was sold to William and Edith Corcoran Eustis, and Mrs. Eustis began to revive the old gardens in the Colonial Revival style. Since 1965, the property has been a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is open to the public from April 1 to December 30.
enclos*ure 