Saturday, January 30, 2010

sepia saturday, double date 1913

These are more wonderful photos from my grandfather's collection.
On the left, is my Great-Grandfather Glenn Hanna, my Great-
Grandmother Ida Belle Lewis, her brother Austin, and his girlfriend,
Mary Boone. They are on the dry, stony ground of Albuquerque, NM
in the spring of 1913.

Don't you love how the guys are dressed to a tee, with hats, coats
and ties, even in the outback of old New Mexico? Poor Ida Belle
doesn't look too thrilled about the whole episode. Maybe she didn't
fancy the idea of posing on the ground? I happen to think they're
looking glum on purpose to be funny. I would love to know who was
behind the camera. It was most likely Uncle Guy, older brother of
Glenn, our dashing young photographer, from one of my earlier posts.

Here they are on the same day, looking a tad bit happier.
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For more Sepia Saturday posts, click [HERE].

74 comments:

  1. Well of course they look happier in the second photo -- they aren't lying on ant hills! The face on your great grandmother in the first picture is so glum and adorable!

    What treasures. We have some pictures of relatives from the same era; I only wish I had done a better job of having my Mother identify everyone before it was too late.

    I love the old pictures. Fantastic.
    Cass

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  2. What a shock! I recognized one of them.
    That's definitely Billy the Kid there on the left.

    (Jes' kiddin')

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  3. Apart from the hats, they look so modern, particularly in the glum photo. You can imagine these faces opposite you on a train, looking up from the adjacent desk in your office. You can almost hear them holding their breath for the camera.

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  4. Willow,

    I had a dream of you last night.
    I quess it was because my brothers son sent an E-mail he found the photo of my Mom and Dad all dressed up in their flying outfits beside the Bi-wing plane. It was in late TWENTY's
    yvonne YOUR POST IS GREAT!!!!!!

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  5. Someone once told me that times change...people don't. I think I see some of that in this picture. I love your Emerson quote on your sidebar. I have that quote on my fridge.

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  6. They're fantastic photos.You're lucky to have them from so far back.The first one does look real contemporary.Mary is very pretty.

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  7. I just love the old pics! I have not been to twitter yet! I need to get on the stick. People will think that I forgot them.

    John Adams, which was on your post below, was a project that my stepbrother worked on. He was in charge of set design in the Richmond area. I missed out on a chance to get on set.

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  8. I wish I had more of the older pictures from my family. I can remember seeing some, but don't know where they are. Berowne had me amazed there for a minute when he said he recognized on of them. I was thinking the same thing, or maybe Bonnie and Clyde.
    QMM

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  9. Excellent! I am struck by the fact that Mary Boone (in the second photo) looks like she could have stepped off the pages of any contemporary magazine with that hair, the stylish ensemble and her fine features.
    I love the casual poses in the first one and your description is wonderful. So much fun, these posts, aren't they?

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  10. The informality of the poses give them great charm and lend them a modern feel.

    Your posts have tempted me to join Sepia Saturday starting tomorrow with an extremely grim and formal family portrait from the 1890s.

    Lord help us all.

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  11. Love it; what always amazes me, including looking at my own old family photos--these women looked good and wore little to no make up! :)

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  12. these are awesome--i love old family photos. they seem so much more romantic and mysterious than the ones from today but maybe years from now people will feel the same way.

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  13. They look like they've had a quarrel to me.

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  14. Lovely pics. Did Austin marry Mary Boone?

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  15. Alaine, yes! Austin Lewis married Marian Hazel Boone. I just looked it up in my records, and they were married in Auguest of 1912, so they were already married at the time of this photo.

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  16. Amazing with the fellows wearing suits...no dry cleaning or pressing? I can't help but think of scorpians in that dirt...I wouldn't smile either. These are treasures!

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  17. I, too, wondered if the gorgeous Mary Boone made it into the family because your photos seem to bear a resemblance to her.

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  18. Love the pictures! It seems to make our grandparents and GGPs so much more human to see them in casual photos instead of the formal studio shots.

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  19. These are lovely. It's always so fun to see people in a different time supposedly relaxing. They would be so embarrassed by how we behave today. I so love seeing faces from the past.

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  20. These are stunning photos. What a treasure trove for your family.

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  21. funny how faces can look so modern, but the clothes give the date away...

    I'm off opera costume deadline, and have time to visit again... I've missed the blogship.
    See you again soon! -J

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  22. I love these! Can you imagine hiking in those outfits? Thank got for walking shorts and sneakers!

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  23. They look like modern Hollywood actors in a period piece! Great shots.

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  24. I agree with whoever said that they look modern. Very hip haircuts on all of them. And goodness! They are all good looking, aren't they?

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  25. They all look like they would be fun to be around. Such fresh faced young men & women. I can definitely see the family resemblance in Glenn...they are a family of handsome men : )

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  26. these pics are amazingly clear.
    they are magnificent.

    xx

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  27. I remember the last time you posted these...really, really cute pictures! Love seeing them so young!

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  28. Great photos. The faces of aged youth. How different young people look these days just with their clothing.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  29. Yes, just look at the clothes! What a handsome group of youg people! Were they traveling? Vacationing? Fascinating photos!

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  30. Great photos! Don't you love looking at all the old clothes in vintage photos? I do. And cars--we always try to take photos next to cars so in years to come, you can see them.

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  31. Willow,

    How charming and innocent they look! But for the attire, and maybe even with it, this fresh-faced group could have been photographed just yesterday.

    Marjorie

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  32. Such beautiful photographs... They are so perfect, I first thought them "faked" with modern equipment.

    And on the noses post... ha ha ha... My high school art teacher had a tiny snub nose (kinda like mine) and she said she'd spent her adolescence pulling on her nose to try and make it bigger/longer/different. Ah if only she'd known about rhinoclay... (I made that word up.)

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  33. FireLight, the Hannas lived in Albuquerque for several years, in hope the climate would help Glenn's older brother, Guy, to recover from TB.

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  34. I love the sepia photos, especially the truly old ones not accomplished by PHOTOSHOP like programs.

    40 years ago I had a home darkroom and experimented with sepia toning, a fairly easy technique but very smelly and irritating to my lungs. I loved the results.

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  35. That first image is gorgeous,
    great poseurs and a very creative photographer, what talent!

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  36. That first image is gorgeous,
    great poseurs and a very creative photographer, what talent!

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  37. Your sepia series are so amazing. I love looking at them, staring really, into their eyes and seeing back into the past. The clothes, the expressions, their beauty...

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  38. Sepia makes one wonder if digital is really a step forward. Lovely shots, and I have posted mine.

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  39. Hello Willow,

    Gorgeous photos once again. For a moment Austin reminded me a little of Ray Bolger of Scarecrow fame in Wizard of Oz! They all look fine but I would also agree that Mary is very pretty and so contemporary.

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  40. That dark dress is gorgeous - was it linen do you think? Shame you haven't got it. I love vintage clothes and inherited a lot from my paternal grandmother - wore them out at pop festivals(long lacy dresses)

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  41. What a fabulous pair of pictures! Adore Ida Belle in the first, and Mary Boone in the second is, quite simply, stunning.

    Perhaps we have got a little lost in these days of jeans and leisure wear. 1913, New Mexico, and exuding class. Wonderful.

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  42. The photos really are quite good. And I'm thinkin' those glums looks are due to either boredom or worry lest they dirty their finery( prob'ly the latter but I'm just guessing )...

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  43. They're wonderful photos regardless.

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  45. They are all wonderful Willow, but Mary Boone has me intrigued!! She does indeed look very contemporary. How wonderful that you have these photos.

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  46. All dressed up lying on the ground! We have become SO VERY CASUAL these days...in some ways I miss the dress up days...just a TINY bit.

    love the photos.

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  47. willow i'm blown away that these photographs are almost a hundred years old and yet the people feel like they are right here right now (other than their clothes). have a lovely day at the manor. steven

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  48. They look as if they dressed up in old clothes and were photographed yesterday with a digital camera set to sepia. A lot of sunlight sure helps the illusion.

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  49. I love the looks on their faces - so telling! I think your ancestors are beautiful people!

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  50. Two handsome young couples who look as though they have what young people should have...all the time in the world and none of the worry. It's a nice thought that they may have been playing up to the camera, and deliberately wearing glum expressions in the first shot.

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  51. These are great. The framing, the composition is so exquisite! And they didn't have photoshop to help create these images. Wow.

    Nice dresses on the gals in the last pic, too.

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  52. I love these photos! They look so young and full of energy! :)
    The Bach

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  53. The first photo is just fantastic! Really beautiful!
    Also love the crystal on the ice!

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  54. Mary Boone looks downright sultry in the first pic. I bet she was a pistol!

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  55. Remarkable images -
    each one a treasure .... .

    Jjj

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  56. Incredible!
    Formal and informal .
    And I'm always struck by how hot and bothered I imagine everyone to be in these outfits. Yet they never seem to be.
    This is a great idea, this Sepia Saturday.

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  57. fabulous photos to own. I wish I was there in that heat right now. I esp like the first photo.

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  58. I love how they dressed up to the nines just for a simple date. That is pretty rare in this world anymore, but, I do know it still happens from time to time. :)

    Happy SS, Willow! Hugs!

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  59. Oh, I love these old timey family picts.

    We have stacks to go through that my gram left behind. They speak history.

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  60. Great photos!
    I have posted the poem for you at last (Milosz).

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  61. Hi Willow, I came from Suki's blog to find out who Willow is:) These photographs are so astonishing. They are beautiful because of the sunny contrasts but also the people (your people:) look very much like modern people. I see that others here have this same impression. I love their gloomy expressions, it's okay cause the sun is there...

    Nice to meet you and your Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother,
    greetings from Paris
    Andrea

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  62. Fabulous photos! I immediately thought "southwest" before I read the story!

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  63. Wonderful photos--it does strike me when looking at very old photos--say pre-1920--that people's expressions in them aren't what we expect, & I wonder if people as photographic subjects had a different way of interacting with the camera. Or maybe it's just the ant hills!

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  64. I've been back to look at these several times. What incredible photos!

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  65. Oh I love these! I have several from the same era~ my Great grandparents on my mother's side but they are not so rich in color. i do love how they dressed and how serious they were when photographed!

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  66. I really like their posing for the camera. It reminds me of the Bonnie and Clyde movie and how they dressed. They are really good photos to own.

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  67. Great clothes, great photos. We are so slobbish now in comparison.

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  68. these are wonderful - so dressed up but also so informal.
    I wonder what they would think of us admiring them now?

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  69. We do dress so informally now. I wish we had kept some of the classiness, as far as clothing is concerned!

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  70. These are beautiful family photos, Willow. I love how soft, yet sharp they are. I know that doesn't make sense.

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  71. So nice to see those pictures!

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  72. hh, these are such fine photographs and love the old vintage sepia toning. I usually get those looks when I'm trying to get my subject to do. . . .something different.
    I always loved how people in the past posed and dressed for a photograph. I think photography was a lot more special and not something to come by very often in the old days and so it was treated with a higher degree of importance than most of the snapshoting that goes on these days.

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  73. I do love the outfits. How wonderful it would be if men (and women) wore hats once again. They always seemed to give an outfit class.

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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
― O. Henry (and me)