Photo 73 has some familiar faces. They are pictured very far away, but their identities are listed on the back.
Photo 73
Reverse of Photo 73: Aunt Bert & Hazel Walters
We first met Aunt Bert in Photo 16. Hazel Walters appeared in Photo 13.
Photo 74 doesn’t have any identifying information, but it is a cute photo:
Photo 74
I believe we’re at another military memorial of some kind in the next two photos:
Photo 75
Photo 76
The next set of photos is kind of a hodge-podge, but a couple present some potentially identifiable landmarks.
Photo 68
Photo 69
I’m kind of curious about the person in the background of this photo. I believe it to be a guy, but it looks like he’s wearing a long robe. I believe we’ll see more photos of the infant the woman is holding in future photos.
Photo 70
This is a funny photo — what a weird backdrop. Wouldn’t you think they would want to stand in front of the stag instead of behind it? It kind of reminds me of the plastic animals in front of a couple all-you-can-eat buffets in New England.
Photo 71
I despaired that the top of the monument isn’t visible in this photo. She’s sitting on a canon pointed at the camera, so I figured this is a Civil War monument. Knowing that at least some of the photos in the album were taken in Pennsylvania, I searched for “Pennsylvania war monument pillar” on Google Images and met with success! Our album’s star is seated in front of the Penn Common Civil War Memorial in York! In this image, you can see some of the writing that is barely visible over her right shoulder above.
Photo 72
I give up. This photo has not one, not two, but THREE codes written on it (see, one is hidden behind one of the photo corners, top right?). There’s only two people in this photo, so presumably there goes my theory about the codes potentially relating to certain photo subjects. Argh!
Exciting news! I’ve finally finished scanning all of the photos in Album 1 of the Album Rescue Project. Now I just need to blog about them!
These ladies have some lovely hats in Photo 64:
Photo 64
Photo 65
Photo 66
Reverse of Photo 66 "Hazel and Ray"
Photo 67 has more of those confounded codes written on it. The numbers must be years, but how do they make any sense? And are the letters initials? This is driving me slowly mad…
Photo 67
Insanity-inducing notations aside, this really is quite a lovely photo…
I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Album Rescue Project, in which I’m removing someone else’s old photos from a 1920s-era paper album and putting them into a new, acid-free album. This past weekend, I undertook a similar project using some of my own photos from a much more recent, but just as damaging environment.
About seven years ago, before I really got into scrapbooking and learned about photo-safe materials, I decided to compile photos from my younger years that were in various sources into one album. I simply went to Michael’s and purchased a standard photo album with magnetic pages.
Big mistake.
Exhibit A: Page 1. After only a few years, the adhesive on these pages is yellowing and that damage is creeping towards the photos.
These days I know better, of course, but I only recently had the chance to dismantle that album and rescue the photos. I was shocked to see how much the pages in the album had been altered in only a few years. Notice the yellowing around the edges? That yellowing doesn’t just stay on the page — it can affect your photos too. Imagine how bad magnetic albums are that have been sitting around for 20 or 30 years.
The damage is quite pervasive -- every page is affected.
Magnetic albums aren’t magnetic at all. The pages have adhesive on them. The adhesive is acidic (aka very bad for photos). It also makes the photos very difficult to remove in many cases, which can cause curling or tearing if you do succeed in removing them.
View of the yellowing adhesive after removal of the photos.
I really have no idea why these albums are still on the market. Do yourself a favor — if you have any photos that you care about in magnetic albums (and let’s face it, if you put them in an album to begin with, then you care about them), take a few minutes to remove the photos from those albums as carefully as you can. Find an acid-free, photo-safe container in which to store them until you can find a better permanent environment to house them. Creative Memories, for which I am a consultant, has several solutions for this purpose. Please contact me if you’d like to learn more about their available options.
Here’s one more summery photo before the weather turns colder.
Photo 61
Is it me or is that building behind her really crooked?
Photo 62
Photo 63
Check out the funky scissors hanging on the wall to the left of the girls.
More fun photos in this next set. And one frustrating one.
Photo 57
The little girl front and center looks like a total badass with her headband and her arms crossed.
And here’s the album’s star with a parasol on a sunny day. If it’s as hot as I think it is, I can’t imagine having to wear those tights and shoes.
Photo 58
The girl in the middle of this photo almost looks glamorous!
Photo 59
And now for the frustrating photo:
Photo 60 (note that his chair is placed over a cellar door)
It’s not the image itself that’s frustrating. It’s what happened on the back:
Reverse of Photo 60: "Uncle H???y"
Argh! Can’t make out the first name of the uncle pictured due to the use of glue to attach this photo. The album owner tended to glue in the photos that were placed toward the center of the album, probably because when the pages were turned, those photos toward the center tended to pop out of the photo corners when the pages bent. This was one of those photos. Dangit.
Here’s some new scenery for the next couple of photos:
Photo 52
Photo 53
It took me a while to notice the woman in the window — interesting shot, huh?
Photo 54
These two are attached at the hip, aren’t they? Note they are both wearing the same pin. I’ve seen the star wearing it other photos in the album. They may just be locket pins, but I wonder if they have some other significance.
I’m really starting to wonder about the labeling system the album owner used on these photos. Why write the same thing twice on this photo? So bizarre…
Photo 55
Too bad this photo is so blurry. She looks happy and also like she’s saying something.
Photo 56
This subject looks a little miffed. I can only guess that she didn’t want her picture taken.
Some of these next photos depict a fun trip to the lake.
Photo 48
That’s our star on the right and her friend in the middle has appeared in several other photos already. At least two of the girls are holding bouquets, but I wonder if they picked these themselves.
Photo 49
Reverse of Photo 49: The Raft
I can only imagine that the group down by this lake or river put a lot of effort into this raft, what with its flag and everything. I love the fact they took a photo of it and even captioned it.
Photo 50
Photo 51
Reverse of Photo 51: First Fishing
I don’t think we’ve come across this little guy before — looks like he’s having fun!
Here’s the album’s star all dressed up again. From the hat and dress, I think both of these photos were taken on the same day.
Photo 46
Photo 47
Once again, no clues on the back of these photos either.
The next photos from the album show more fun times outdoors. Have you noticed that all of these photos have been taken outdoors? I guess flash photography wasn’t available (not affordably, at least), so they had to rely on natural light to take their photos.
Photo 43
Photo 44
I’m trying to decide if the above is some sort of game or if the photographer was just waiting for imminent disaster (kind of like with the hammock series…).
Photo 45
And, any idea what she’s holding?
Unfortunately, none of these photos have notes on the back.
