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Do any of you collect vintage or antique photographs?

darinwc

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Dec 14, 2003
Messages
3,164
Location
Sacramento,
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Lately I have been collecting early photography: Daguerreotypes, Ambrotypes, Stereo cards, etc.

Buying off Ebay though is really bottom-feeding. There is really nothing I can find locally.

Here is one from my collection. A very interesting couple for sure! This is a quarter-plate Ambrotype.

 
I often thought about it — there was a place on St-Laurent street where you could find old photos for cheap, and I used to stop and look at them —, but I know I would just spend too much time with each wondering who they were, where did they come from, where was it taken, how was their life at the moment of the photograph, what happened to them, etc. It would drive me crazy. The combination of unknown subject(s) and unknown photographer is a bit too much for me, as is the idea that a photograph made to preserve the memory of a moment, and the people filling it, is now a symbol of all that is forgotten about them.
 
I collect portraits. At first to decorate my office and when I retired, I thought some were of some mild historical importance, So I published them as a book- Eleventyone Portraits 1841-1950. Amongst those images was a very early British daguerreotype and since then I have concentrated on 1841 to 1845 British daguerreotypes. One of interest to Americans might be a ninth plate 1844 image of Eliza P. Gurney. spiritual advisor to Abraham Lincoln. To carry on with the Lincoln theme, I also have a small Tintype that reminds me of George Atzerodt
 

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I don't collect systematically, but I am curious and pick up photographs and negatives if interesting looking and before WWII.
One example:
Ghanese soldiers returning from France (circa 1920):
 
A photographer from that period. Salt print or combo salt and albumen.
 
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I often think about how photography was when looking at some old pictures, and if it was as fun as it is now.
 
Nitroplat, “Ghanese soldiers returning from France (circa 1920)”

The skull cap, and at ease nature of one chatting, is so everything. What a photo!

(can’t tell as no insignia, but the clump of guys on the right are likely officers, the ring on the hand, and the suitcases, too - so typical of all soldiership as the rank file stay racked in line aside them, nothing changes)
 
I wouldn't consider myself I collector but have a bunch of old family photographs (we keep everything), the oldest is from the 1890s. Then an album of what must have been an epic trip to Europe in the early 1920's, around a 100 photos in that album.
 
I'm slowly scanning all our family negatives from the 1920s onwards. It must have been a relatively expensive hobby in this neck of the woods: there are lots of negatives, but almost no prints. Also, our hobbyist made copious minuscule notes on the edge of many negatives with a pin. Everything from high school, through college, the army and into industry. I also have stereographic sets of "Japanese-Russian War Views", including jolly scenes such as "Hospital Corps Ready to Leave Seoul for Manchuria", and "The Crew of the Russian Battleship 'Retvizan'". So whoever that photographer was, he could cross sides.
 
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I also have a few Dag portraits, which truly fascinate me. They are so sharp and lifelike that I see their subjects as ghosts. In some sense they seem to live through those images.
 
I have a box-full of Daguerrotypes and tin-types of my own ancestors. A miserable-looking lot they were too. Same goes for the two oil portraits I am burdened with. Modern photographic processes allow a lot more fun to show through. The turning point when momentary happiness was invented must have been somewhere around 1920.
 
Hi,

I recently joined because amazingly enough just over these past two days, I have attended two family run estate sales and both had large amounts of antique photos for sale. I thought that was pretty rare fir such a thing to happen. Luckily I did purchase a lot because I go to sales often, and I'm big about being first or at least close to first at sales. I have been collecting all types of antiques since 1998.
 
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