David Murdock Column: On viewing old photographs
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” they say. I don’t know who “they” are, but they say it … and I believe it. But, there’s a warning to remember with that old proverb — a photograph without context can be next to useless, in terms of historical research. Context is usually found in the form of words, even if it’s just as simple as the date.
Between cups of coffee this morning, I glanced through the internet. Always a big mistake. I lost track of time because one of my favorite websites had about 100 photographs people had posted of their families. These folks were pointing out how “young” their grandparents looked in the photos, but my eye is always drawn to background details.
For example, one of the photos showed someone’s grandfather outside the urban grocery store he owned in the 1920s. The person who posted it captioned it with the date, and the first thing I noticed was not the man standing in the door of his store, leaning up against the jamb, and smiling broadly — obviously proud of what he had accomplished.
My eye was instead immediately drawn to the advertisements in the windows on either side of the proud owner … and the prices! A 5-pound bag of sugar was 12 cents! A 5-pound bag of sugar today costs … costs … costs … well, I honestly don’t know. I haven’t bought sugar by the pound in a long time. I just know it’s a lot more than 12 cents.
I’m not the only one who noticed. Glancing down at the comments section, I noticed that many of the other folks who’d looked at these photos focused on the prices. That’s what caught peoples’ eyes.
By the way, I usually don’t look at the comments sections on websites. In folklore stories, trolls live under bridges, but “internet trolls” live in the comments sections. For peace of mind, I don’t look at the nasty comments people sometimes make.
Many of those photos were similar — somewhere in the photo would be advertisements for various products, and the folks in the comments sections noticed those prices. In one photo from the early days of color televisions, for example, the price listed for one was over $1,650. That’s a lot of money today, but it was far more back then, considering the rate of inflation.
Researchers in the far future, looking back on the internet of 2023, will likely notice all the comments about prices. Obviously, it’s because inflation is high today and folks are concerned about prices. However, it’s often difficult to research everyday knowledge — like prices — because the places where prices are listed are lost.
There’s a term for this sort of objects of research: “ephemera.” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the term as “paper items (such as posters, broadsides, and tickets) that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles.” And collectible they are! According to an Oct. 2, 2015, article in TimeMagazine, a lunch menu from the Titanic, saved in the pocket of a passenger who made it into a lifeboat, fetched $88,000 at auction.
Enter photographs. Lots of everyday, ephemeral knowledge can be gleaned from old photographs. Simply look in the backgrounds of the photographs, the parts that the photographer is not photographing.
One thing I’ve noticed about researching old photographs is that it’s better to have other sets of eyes looking at them. Other people notice things that I won’t, for example, or they have knowledge that I don’t.
My brother Greg is invaluable with old photographs of city street scenes. If the date is not recorded somewhere on the photo, I can ask Greg to look at it for an approximate date. Why? He can tell by the cars in the picture! His eyes go straight to the cars, and he’ll say something like “That’s a 1947 Ford.” Once he gives me an approximate date range on cars, I can then look at the buildings in the background and get an approximate date range for other photos in which the buildings look about the same. Again, it’s an approximation, but it’s useful.
I learned that trick looking at photos of Edgar Allan Poe. There aren’t many, and he looks downright scary in nearly all of them. However, when I read about the context of each photograph, it made sense. Most of them were taken right after times of personal struggle, so obviously, he’d looked somber, at least. However, written accounts record that his contemporaries, especially women, found Poe to be a handsome man — not the scary man we see today when we look at the photos.
That brings me to my experiences talking to students. Now that I can easily find old photographs of famous writers for my PowerPoint presentations … I do. Students often point out things in those photos that prompt more research. I’ve learned so much about writers over the years tracking down odd little things they notice in those photographs that I didn’t.
I’ll end with a “proverb” that an experienced teacher told me when I started: “You’ll learn a lot more teaching a class than you ever did taking one.” Very true, that is.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: On gleaning knowledge from old photographs | DAVID MURDOCK
