Featured Gem 21
Real Photo Postcard

‘Good Luck Black Cat’

Date: 1909
People: Unidentified
Studio: Unspecified
Postcard Back: Blank

Notes: Such a great pose and fabulous costume! (From the same collection as Gem 16) This image is from a series of over twenty postcards from the same old album. Apparently there was a message on the front of the album that read: “To The Mayoress with H Jenkins compliments. 1909 A souvenir of the Childrens Fancy Dress Ball”. What a fancy dress ball it must have been!

I have posted one of these studio/prop aeroplane photographs before {over here}. I am strangely drawn to them, perhaps because some look so peculiar? There’s something very bizarre and disconcerting about some of them.

Is it the proportion and warped scale? Or is it setups and strange anomalies like the spooky bodiless boy gripping on for dear life with his lone hand (left)…or could it be the expression on their faces? Don’t they look like they’re having a great time in the photo below? I am sure they are supposed to be having fun!

Unfortunately these images don’t have a great deal of information on the back. The one at the top was taken in 1928 and the one to the left was taken at the Spence Lees Studios, Laxey. And that’s unfortunately all I know about them. I wish I knew where they were all taken, was it at a studio, a portable studio at a funfair, on a pier, who are the people, what were they doing? Why did they decide to have their picture in the faux plane? It’s all a bit of a mystery really!

I love the messages on the back of these mother/daughter paper moon postcards:
from Marie – “I thought I would take a trip with my mother to the moon…”
from Aggie – “I have always been light headed but I got to the moon at last…”

More studio photos using props and faux setups to come this week!
(and look! Halfway through…fifteen posts in fifteen days! Mum’s enjoying it haha!)

Featured Gem 20
Real Photo Postcard
‘Dark Angel’

Date: Unknown
People pictured: Unknown
Studio: Harrison Imperial Studio Pendle St, Nelson
Postcard Back: blank/unused

Notes: Who are these girls dressed as? Possibly religious, based on mythology, seasonal? A play, a dance? The girl in the middle with the wings looks very striking in her costume. Here is a closeup .

I’ve got a few Paper Moon and ‘prop photo’ posts to come over the next couple of weeks. I’ve been gathering quite a collection. Unfortunately I’m a bit snowed under with a pressing work deadline this week, so in the meantime, if anyone is in Melbourne and looking for something to do, go and take your own Paper Moon photograph at the Museum and ride the roller coaster (and beat the heat at the same time – BONUS!). They have a Paper Moon set up in the Melbourne Gallery as part of the display on Luna Park. Eloise wasn’t very obliging when we were last there, so I am itching to go back! My heart skipped a beat when I first discovered it. Oh how I love the Melbourne Gallery, I could spend hours in there (although Eloise isn’t too keen on the ‘spooky house’). What I would give to have an original Coles Book Arcade ‘tin egg’! I think I definitely have my Dad to thank for my appreciation of Australian history.

More to come…