The Box from the Junk Store

Guest Post written by Ernest Zarate

The musings Mike and others had about documenting one’s life brought something to mind for me. I attended eight different elementary schools, one junior high, and three high schools, in a variety of California towns, mostly along the Central Coast, from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara. My mom, who raised five kids on her own, was always one step ahead of bill collectors and landlords.

In 1973, as I entered college, I was given a copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. For some reason, I started writing down every address I lived at on the inside cover, from 1973 to the present: 24 addresses, 12 cities or towns, in three states, all in the USA.

Also in 1973, I met another photography student, Leigh, at Santa Barbara City College (still my dear friend). He suggested we go out on photo excursions, which I happily agreed to. Leigh enjoyed going to small towns and finding the local junk store. We’d go in and he’d rifle through their old 78 RPM records and old postcards. Then we’d go out shooting.

On one such trip, I was occupying myself by digging around in some boxes haphazardly stacked in the back of a store in Santa Paula, when I came across a box that contained a collection of exposed and processed 4x5 glass plates, along with printing frames, unopened boxes of dry plates, and some film holders. There were easily a hundred glass plate negatives, though a number were broken. Fifteen dollars, and the whole thing was mine.

Looking at them, it became quite apparent that this was the work of one dedicated amateur photographer. One ongoing subject reoccurred in many of the plates: exterior shots of a two story home, with its occupants sitting front and center. And the photographer returned time and again to recording this family in front of their homestead for many years. In the early photos, the people were young, strong, and proud, the men with defiant mustaches, the women holding infants and toddlers. The home, standing alone with no visible neighbors, was surrounded by empty space, save a few saplings, thin and spindly.

Early

Later

As the series goes on, the people grow older, the saplings get taller, and new young 'uns join in the picture. Vines start to overtake the wrap-around porch. Eventually, the trees are tall and stately, much of the home covered in ivy, those men become hunched over, with canes, seated, though still sporting their mustaches, the women looking just as worn, with a new generation around them.

If I was a gun enthusiast, I could maybe date that rifle our friend is so proudly displaying. Love the way that dog has its chest puffed out for the photo, too.

There are only horse drawn carriages, never any cars or other indications of modern conveniences. This photographer really wanted to document what must have been his family (I say 'his' because a couple of photographs include the shadow of the tripod, camera, and photographer, dressed in pants with a hat).

POP print

Dry plate photography got started in the 1880s and dropped off in the late 1920s, which would cover a span of time equal to what these photos show. When I was an undergrad at San Francisco Art Institute, I had an apartment with a tiny back porch. It only got an hour or two of direct sunlight. I purchased some Kodak POP [printing-out paper —Ed.], put a glass neg and a sheet of POP in the printing frame, and sat out on the porch keeping the frame in direct sunlight. (The photographer’s processing technique was haphazard, to say the least.) I’d crack open one side of the frame to monitor progress, and when the print looked good, I’d take it in and fix and wash it. Whiled away many sunny SF afternoons doing that!

I had to dig these plates out of The Shed. I've not looked at them in a very long time. At some point, around the mid 1990s, I tried to get some info on the photos. The Oakland Museum of California tried to help, but they came up empty-handed. I did get some RC prints out of the attempt.

I still have the glass negatives. Not as many as I used to—moving around is hard on these old negs.

It was such a serendipitous event to find these at a young age. I’m honored to be the trustee of this family’s history, though I’d gladly return the photographs to them if I could.

—Ernest

Book of Interest this Week

Gregory Crewdson: Alone Street. "Filmic" seems the best single adjective to describe Gregory Crewdson's work; his directed and carefully managed tableau are the still photography version of scenes in movies. As such they are hyper-real; more beautiful than life and more poetic, and more concerted. They're also very easy to enjoy and a pleasure to look at.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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Comments

[James]

What a wonderful post. I love old stuff. (Maybe because that's what I'm made of?)
Whenever I see old photos of places and the locations are noted, I try to match the shooting position on Google Maps to see how they appear now.

[Peter Komar]

Quite the find as a young man, and a bargain as well. I also have a hundred or so 5x7 and 8x10 glass plate negatives. These are documentary type of an old foundry and they document many things. There are executive portraits, work in progress and completed items from which the foundry made its profits. I have found the best way to preserve them is to scan them on a flat bed scanner before they get further damaged or just start to deteriorate. I was even able to repair digitally a broken glass negative after scanning it. Scanning and then printing on a good inkjet printer and paper brings them back to life.

[Ken]

This seems to be precisely the type of story where the missing details can be fleshed out through crowd sourcing.

[robert mckeen]

Great images, always fascinating to look back at life and people, in this digital age our families will have slim pickings to look at.
The image with the very noble dog, I think the rifle is a Winchester 1893 pump action shot gun
coming from Liverpool U.K.no expert just used Google.

[Tam]

Looks like a Winchester 1897 shotgun.

Fascinating pictures from an early 20th Century era that was post “the closing of the frontier” but well before most of the continent had been homogenized into the modern postwar Present.

[T. Edwards]

My guess is that is a Winchester 1897 shotgun.

It has an external hammer and when you pump it, the bolt extends back towards the shooter and cocks the hammer - hence its nickname "the thumb buster" See the picture under "Description" heading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1897

[gary bliss]

Mike --

I believe that firearm is certainly not a rifle but a pump-action shotgun, most probably a Model 1893 Winchester. I cannot place an image in this note, but a google search will confirm the likeness.

This was John Browning design and the first commercially successful repeating shotgun. In context the owner would be rather proud of it since, in addition to fowl and upland small game, it could also be used for deer under 100 yards. Therefore it was a useful tool with a family to feed in an era before hunting regulations (which came along about 20 years later).

-- gary ray

[Rick Popham]

In the family picture, since you were wondering, the man to the left is holding a Winchester 1897 slide action shotgun. The boy to the right (on the man's lap) looks like he's holding something similar -- in a very alarming way.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Terrific story, Ernest! Old photos such as these can be so mesmerizing. I spent the summer before the pandemic helping to examine and catalog an enormous collection of daguerreotypes. Nearly all the subjects were anonymous. But it was great fun to deconstruct some of their lives by analyzing minute details still crisply recorded on those dags. That family portrait outside the log cabin is a real gem. Yes, that proud dog really lends a comic air to it. But the baby’s enchantment with the dog makes it even better.

As to that gun, I’m no firearms fan but it looks like a shotgun to me. Further, it looks like a pump-action shotgun…probably an expensive weapon for the day. A quick search reveals that that style of gun made its first appearance after 1882 (the Spencer Pump. That, plus details from the clothing suggest that that image dates from right at the end of the 19th century.

Thanks very much for sharing this with us, Ernest!

[Gordon Buck]

The gun on the left is a Winchester Model 1897 pump shotgun -- not an 1893. The 1897 came out in 1897 but was manufactured for many years.

[Ilkka]

The composition of these photographs is better than 99.8% of all pictures posted on the internet nowadays. Clearly shows a time when making a photograph was taken seriously as it involved a lot of effort and expense.

[Philip Ernsberger]

I grew up in Santa Paula (1928-1950), But I do not recognize the houses. There are a number of small farms surrounding the town. Were there any names in the box of junk? If I can be of any help, please contact me.