ephemera

Hotel Del Coronado Photo Mystery Remains Unsolved

Two years ago, I wrote a post about a mysterious photograph believed to have been taken at the Hotel Del Coronado. To revive interest in the mystery (in hopes of solving it), I'm featuring this vintage postcard from the famous San Diego hotel's dining room. There's no mystery about this vintage dining room postcard, however. It's clearly stamped with the name of the hotel and a description--if only ephemera was always so easy to decifer.

Experts at the Border Rail Institute examined the mystery photo (which can be seen in the orginal post), and believe it was taken in one of the hotel's banquet rooms. They can't say for sure, however, if it was taken during the 1919 Railway banquet...can you?

Vernacular Photos Provide Glimpse into Real Life

Vernacular photography can provide a glimpse into real life. For instance, I once owned a turn-of-the-century snapshot of two women sewing on the front steps of a home. Unlike the vast majority of early amateur photos, were the subjects are posed, candid shots like this one engage the viewer and provide a glimpse into real life.

Vernacular photography, defined as snapshots taken by amateur or unknown photographers, is one of the hottest areas of collecting. Vernacular photos feature scenes from ordinary life, like the sewing women example, and cover a wide range of subject matter from family photos to vacation slides. Ron Radue, a vernacular collector and antique dealer, calls these images “a virtual time machine.”

Yes, Ice Cream Cones are Ephemeral

Faces of Asheville Portrait Documentary Project

Jenny G. Bowen, an Asheville-based professional photographer, is the creative force behind Faces of Asheville, a portrait documentary project that is "intended to visually document the eclectic and outstanding friends and neighbors who make up the core...as well as the zeitgeist of Asheville."

I recently had the pleasure of sitting for my portrait, which I hope will be included in the exhibit and associated book project. During my half-hour photo session, Jen said she hopes to exhibit the photograph in early 2009. She still needs a few hundred more participants, so I encourage anyone in Asheville or the surrounding area to schedule a photo shoot with Jen as soon as possible. For more details on becoming part of this worthwhile and exciting project, visit Faces of Asheville.

When I left the session, Jen handed me a note that included the words, "community and individuality are sacred." I think that perfectly sums up the genius of Jen's remarkable project.

Photograph Kodak Collector Martha Cooper Interview

Martha Cooper, a.k.a. Kodakgirl, is a documentary photographer who began shooting in kindergarten and has an extensive collection of images of women and cameras. Many are posted on her Web site. Martha began collecting images of men, women, children, and animals with cameras in 1977 after coming across an old postcard of a dog with a camera in an antique shop. "I quickly found out about postcard and ephemera shows and began attending them whenever I could," she says. "At the time, I was a staff photographer for the New York Post..." Martha talks more about her love of images and related ephemera in the following interview.

ephemera: Tell me about how you've built your image collection, and the challenges you face in doing so.

Cooper: I'm a freelance photographer with an uncertain income, so I just can't afford to buy at the high end of the market. This means that I concentrate on snapshots, for example, rather than carte de visites. I prefer to have the fun of finding and buying lots of things than saving my money for the one great find. I'm aware that in the end I might have a more "valuble" collection if I held off on the little stuff but it would be less enjoyable for me personally.

Pre-eBay, the biggest challenge was to find interesting images. Now, there are so many, the challenge is to decide which ones to bid on. Now I limit my collection to women and cameras--something that was possible only post-eBay.

ephemera: What about storage issues?

Cooper: Storage is also a challenge. I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. For awhile I collected 3 dimensional items such as toy cameras and salt and pepper shakers with cameras and that kind of thing. I quickly ran out of space. Now I concentrate on postcards and snapshots which don't take up much room. I try to store them carefully in archival sleeves and boxes but my apartment isn't temperature controlled and that could be a problem in the long run. I've noticed some of my magazine ads have become brittle.

ephemera: What are some of your favorite images or ephemera related to Kodak?

Cooper: I have lots of favorites. Maybe my favorite snap is the one of six women in a row holding cameras with their names handwritten underneath. It's the first photo in the snapshot section of my www.kodakgirl.com site. I'm also very fond of the beautiful graphic art of woman and camera on the Hawk-Eye catalog on the home page of Kodakgirl.

ephemera: How do you find images or decide which images to include in your collection?

Cooper: My only criterion for success is having fun. It always surprises me when people email me and want to know how much something is "worth". I am only interested in how much something is worth to me. I don't have any plans to sell my collection. If possible I would like to keep it together and donate it to a museum. I think there are two kinds of collections--known items and unknown items. In the first category are things like stamps, coins, baseball cards and beanie babies. These are all things which have been extensively documented and valued so the collector knows exactly what to look for. In addition to rarity, price is often determined by the condition of the object since there are few one-of-a-kind items. My collection is almost entirely of unknown items, many one-of-a-kind. For me that's where the excitement of discovery lies. I am always looking for unusual images of women and cameras that I didn't know existed. I enjoy many aspects of collecting--searching for things (now mostly on eBay), receiving purchases by mail, arranging them in categories, meeting other collectors on line and in person, and learning how to make a website. For me this constitutes a "successful" collection.

ephemera: For someone who want to build a similar collection, what resources do you recommend?

Cooper: I generally buy supplies from dealers at postcard shows. I don't subscribe to any collector publications but I do quite a bit of rooting around on the internet to find out about things.

ephemera: I'm a big fan of this genre of ephemera. It's something that I think a lot of people connect with. Thanks for sharing your expertise.

Ullman Photo Print - Lady By the Sea

Of the more than 600 posts I've written, few have received as many comments as the post I wrote years ago about an Ullman Mfg. Co. print. Since so many people seem to be fans of Ullman, I thought I'd feature Lady By The Sea, a 1899 print from Ullman Mfg. Co.

If you read the comments in the original post, you'll see there are a lot of people with many unanswered questions about the Ullman prints they own. I've often wondered what made the Ullman prints stand out among so many reasonably priced prints from the same era. Maybe some Ullman expert will find this post and click through to the questions and unravel the mysteries of this vintage American print maker.

Great Bike Raffle at Park Road Shopping Center

After reading my post about the Circus Train (pictured) at Park Road Shopping Center (PRSC), Ron Dougherty left the following Twain-esque comment--a wonderful story about events that took place a half-century ago at PRSC.

Ron's comment was so moving, funny, and thoughtful that I've decided to feature it as a stand-alone post:

"I have just run across this page; I was trying to find out when Park Road SC opened. My family moved to Charlotte in 1951, when I was 5, and when PRSC opened, I was 10. For part of the grand opening, a raffle for 25 boy's bikes and 25 girl's bikes was held. Each store gave out entry forms if you stopped in and asked for them. I couldn't afford a bike at the time, and needed one for a paper route (I eventually delivered the Charlotte News), so I just HAD to win one.

I collected handfuls of entry forms, and spent many nights filling them all out by hand. I kept the stubs in numerical order in a large box. I still remember how many I filled out- close to 2,000.

On the day of the drawing out in the middle of the parking lot, all the entries from all the stores had been put in a huge drum. I was there with my family and my box. I was so relieved when my name was the third one called out! I was surprised when it was also the fifth one called out. I became embarrassed when my name was called every three or four names. I was called up onto the platform and asked how many forms I'd filled out. When I told the folks, everyone in the crowd had a good laugh. They had another when the man in charge bent over with his microphone and told me kindly 'But you do know we're only giving you one bike, don't you son?'

That bike remained in my possession and at our house on Somerset Drive until my Mom sold it and moved to a condominium near Park Road and Selwyn. Of all the bikes I've had since then, some costing a thousand dollars, none has meant as much to me as the red one I won that day."

Ryan Mason Photographer

The thoughtful folks at Malaprop's, an Indy bookstore in Asheville, were kind enough to let me scoop up some local ephemera from their bulletin wall, and one of the pieces I happened upon was this announcement of Ryan Mason's photography exhibit at The University of North Carolina at Asheville. After reading the card, I checked out his impressive Web site. Today, I decided to feature this card, a nice ephemera keepsake, but really, I'm merely using it as a vehicle to give this young photographer's work some richly deserved coverage.

If you're ever in Asheville, be sure to stop in at Malaprop's Bookstore, and tell them the ephemera blog sent you...they're good people.

University of South Carolina - Sigma Chi Event

Sigma Chi is one of the oldest college Greek-letter fraternities. This photograph from a Sigma Chi event was taken at the University of South Carolina in the 1950s.

The group includes the President of the University (seated far right). Members of the fraternity can be seen standing in the background. It appears as though they are watching a golf-outing, but this is purely conjecture on my part.

I've never been a particularly big fan of college fraternities having had a bad experience with one at Illinois State, my alma mater. My roommate was pledging a very poor excuse for a fraternity, and I was swept along for a short time. I'd quickly come to realize that I was better off as a GDI. (GDI, for those unfamiliar, is derogatory term used by members of Greek organizations to describe someone who has sufficient intelligence and social skills to simply make friends, not pay for them.)

Color Kodachrome Great Depression

I pinched this early Kodachrome slide from the Daily Kos blog. Kos points out: "Look how mad grandma is and how her granddaughter is stomping away."

The original post features several other Kodachrome images from the same era. A truly remarkable look at a grim era we generally see only in black-and-white.