Sepia Saturday 173: Tauranga's waterfront a century ago

Sepia Saturday invites us this week to post those odd photographs in our collections which we've found difficult to identify, categorize or even understand. While not denying that I have several oddities in my own collection worthy of inclusion in my What were they thinking? category, I've chosen to use an image from the Tauranga Heritage Collection, where I've spent much of the last three weeks helping to photograph, research and document a large but jumbled collection of old cameras.


Dogs at The Strand, Tauranga, Undated
Loose print by unidentified photographer
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
The pile of logs seemingly jettisoned on The Strand, more or less in the middle of town, had probably been offloaded from a boat at the wharf, just off to the left the photograph. Devonport Road is to the right, disappearing behind the double storey building which houses Cart & Co's clothing and footwear store. The dogs are doing what dogs always do, but quite why the photographer saw fit to save this snapshot from the dustbin, I can't really understand.


View Larger Map
Google's Streetview (above) shows a landscape superficially different, although it's worth noting that general layout, at least in this view, is still much the same. None of the original stores are there. Telegraph poles have been replaced by nautically flavoured lamp posts (although I don't think many have swung from these yardarms in the recent past) and the roads and pavements have been sealed, concreted or bricked over. That particular palm tree is long gone, but there are many more in the vicinity, as panning to the left in the Streetview image above will reveal.

A short post from me this week, as I've been a little busy on other projects, but if you're hankering after more sepian oddballs, I'm sure the other participants will happily oblige.

Sepia Saturday 79: Dressed for the Beach

Sepia Saturday's photo prompt this week from Alan Burnett depicts two young early 20th Century ladies relaxing on the beach in Atlantic City, but dressed in a manner that will certainly protect them well from the noon day sun. Not everyone goes to beach to swim, and if you live in this Antipodean location, then you'd be advised to go well wrapped at this time of the year (the Met Service advises 3 layers!). As far as swimming's concerned, I think you'd have to pay me.


My own contribution for this theme consists of two tintypes, mounted in flimsy paper sleeves the size of cartes de visite. They are part of a larger collection of 73 loose photographs which I purchased as a single lot on eBay last year. The vendor told me that they had originally been acquired together, and my own research has given me reason to believe that they do indeed belong together. Although these tin types are not inscribed, I've been able to determine, by comparison with others in the collection in which the subjects are identified, and by some additional research, who is depicted and approximately when it was taken.


Measuring roughly 69 x 82 mm, they are an odd size, somewhere between quarter-plate and sixth-plate. Both show a woman seated on the beach with two young children. She is Emily Minns née Carr (1840-1927), wife of Stoke Newington draper Charles Thomas Minns (1838-1900), and the two children with her are most likely her two eldest sons Charles Walter Marston Minns (1874-1951) and Frederick Thomas Minns (1875-1956).


Her third son was born in late 1877, which suggests to me that these two photographs were taken in the summer of 1877, probably by an itinerant beach photographer. The second image, taken from a slightly different angle, includes what may be a large spoked wheel of a bathing machine, similar to that shown in an early 20th Century photograph which I posted two weeks ago as a submission for the 105th Carnival of Genealogy (Swimsuit Edition).


Ladies' and Children's Bathing Suits
Harper's Bazaar, 15 July 1876
I assumed initially that they were dressed for outdoor activities. However, now that I've looked at Stella Blum's Victorian Fashions and Costumes from Harper's Bazaar 1867-1898, I think they could well be wearing bathing suits. Although not identical - that would be so "last year" wouldn't it - the clothes are similar to those depicted in the engraving shown from July 1876, reproduced above. Perhaps someone more familiar with Victorian fashions can confirm - or refute - this. While they belong firmly in the "What were they thinking?" category in the present day, I feel they were at the height of fashion back then.

I'm looking forward to a suitably eclectic selection of swimsuits among the other Sepia Saturday contributions this week.

Another Move-O-Graph Portrait

A year ago I posted an article about Move-O-Graph, The Live Portrait, a gimmicky idea from an era well before the advent of video cameras, even before Super 8 home movie cameras. Tony Rackstraw posted a similar Living Portrait on his blog, Early Canterbury Photographers.


Recently I received another example of a Move-O-Graph portrait from David Brook, depicting his father Archibald Brook (1888-1967). It was probably taken in the late 1910s or early 1920s. The mechanism, which from Tony Rackstraw's description appears to consist of two layers, has survived intact. The lower layer consists of a composite photographic image made from two distinct views, and the second is a covering "filter" of cellulose with very narrow vertical black strips. The "movement" effect is created by the gaps between these strips alternately revealing first one image and then the other, as the filter is moved slightly from side to side.


The reverse of the card which encases the photograph has printed instructions for achieving the full effect. The pencilled "530a Oxford Street" was added by the subject at some stage.


I've used images sent to me by David in an attempt to recreate this "movement" digitally using an animated GIF. The effect is a little unnerving, and David ensures me the original is even more so.


To be honest, I can't imagine why a perfectly good-looking gentleman like Archibald Brook, pictured in a more conventional portrait at around the same time above, might want to preserve his features in such a manner. None of the examples I've seen so far - and several more have appeared on the net since my last article - have been very flattering, and I would even be bold enough to say that most are positively bizarre. I'm not particularly suprised that the format apparently never lasted more than a few years.

If you have a Move-O-Graph that produces a pleasant effect - I would even settle for somewhat comical - please get in touch so we can share it. For the moment, I'm adding this one to my newly created "What were they thinking?" category.