Most of the prints in my “Korea albums” are in color and date from the 1980s and perhaps early 1990s; but there are a handful of vintage black-and-white photos that really add to the depth and poignancy of this collection. Still, they provide more questions than answers. The single color photograph in this week’s collection depicts the original album owner’s […]
I’m setting the Korean photo albums aside this week to share a look at a very different group of images. These are all black and white portraits, both formal and informal, that I’ve discovered while browsing the open-air flea market at Denio’s in Roseville over the past few years. A handful of these — like the well-dressed couple above — […]
This week I have the last set of amateur photographs from the 1940s Washington D.C. class trip. The rest of the album is filled with professionally shot souvenir photos; they’re very interesting, although several of them are quite tiny. I’ll most likely be sharing them at a future date. I also wanted to note that the last names of the […]
Some of the photos from this class trip in the late 1940s are difficult to make out, so I’m glad there are short notes for many of the images written in the margins of the photo album. Today’s pictures include a trip to the National Zoo, the Pan American Union Headquarters, and the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in […]
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, when I went to D.C. in January 1986 I foolishly neglected to take a camera along — a choice I still regret. Thankfully, I did keep a trip journal (in a notebook that was originally “Chocolate Scented”) describing my visits to various museums, riding the Metro, my day trip to Baltimore, and the odd […]
I first learned about the artist Chiura Obata (1885-1975) during my visit to Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum back in September 2018. I shared some images from that visit more recently, in October 2020, showing some of his drawings and other pieces (including the one above) that particularly impressed me. So I was very happy to discover Moonlight, a large piece […]
My apologies if it seems that lately I have been constantly jumping from one topic to another, but the fact is I just got my hands on a fantastic vintage photo album that I’m quite excited about. And, given the fact that today in the US we’re observing Independence Day, I thought it was quite appropriate to share a few of these images this week. While I have pages and pages of similar vintage photos (some measuring a mere 2.5 x 1.5 inches/6.3 x 3.8 cm) to share at some point in the future, I promise that next week I will be returning to the tour of South America. One reason I’m so pleased with these photos is that on my one and only trip to Washington, D.C. (back in January 1986) I kept very busy running around seeing as many things as possible — but I completely failed to shoot any pictures of my own. I have only postcards to remember that trip by, along with a few notes in a travel journal. I don’t know a whole lot about this particular photo album except that the images date from the mid 1940s and include some professionally shot and labeled photos as well as shots by an amateur photographer documenting a class trip to the nation’s capital. I really appreciate seeing these black-and-white images of the famous landmarks in DC, and it’s intriguing to see how much some of […]
I discarded my own high school yearbooks long, long ago, but when I found a vintage annual from 1968 at the Roseville flea market, I grabbed it. Fresno High’s Royce Hall (pictured above) dates from 1922, although the school itself has been in existence since 1889. Some of the school’s former students include Baseball Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, director/screenwriter […]