I am so fortunate to have inherited a collection of family photographs dating back to the earliest days of photography. The oldest images, of my great-grandparent’s parents and grandparents, are daguerreotypes, carte de visites and cabinet cards taken by professional photographers.
Starting in the late 1800s, my great-grandparents became the photographers, taking pictures of their children — my grandfather Charles and his brother Jack.
These images were scanned directly from the glass plate negatives, flaws and all.
Charles (behind the chicken wire), Jack, and cousin Sally.
My great-grandfather — Chester Loomis — was an artist, and often used his children as models for his paintings.
My great-Uncle Jack was an avid photographer. I have albums filled with images of his life — traveling in Europe as a soldier in World War I, trips across the country by car and train, and countless photos of his beloved wife Eleanor. His early photographs depict his life as a young man summering with friends in the hills of Vermont.
My grandmother, who married Charles, Jack’s brother, was also a photographer in her younger days. She studied at Clarence White‘s Seguinland School of Photography in Maine, where she sat for portraits made by fellow students and even White himself.
“Dorothy Abbot Loomis, taken by Clarence White, 1915”
Her nephew and niece
Written on the back of this photo of her husband Charles:
“Won $10 in a newspaper photo contest for this.”
Her son, Eliot
My father Eliot loved photography, and took hundreds of photographs of his favorite scenery — Yosemite, Yellowstone, as well as friends and family.
Which brings us to me. Pictured here in a photo taken by my father, it’s clear that there’s a future librarian in the making, thanks to being surrounded with books early on. But I was also given the gift of “seeing” by several generations of passionate photographers. I grew up poring over the old photo albums, memorizing the people and places, playing with my father’s and grandparents’ cameras, and discovering that their passion stirred in me as well.
What is your photographic legacy? How did your family play a role in how and what you shoot today?
—lucy
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These are absolutely stunning, Lucy! I have boxes and boxes of pictures my father took. He would have loved the whole digital era and the tinkering that now be done to pictures…and yes, I definitely got my early start in photography from him!
What a beautiful legacy! I love the simplicity and candid nature of these…so different from the over-processed and sometimes overthought images that I often see (and take) today. This makes me want to shoot film again!
What a treasure trove, Lucy! They are all so wonderful, but that silhouette of the boy and the birdcage is going to stay with me a long time.
These are amazing!! Funny, I keep a list of ideas for posts to write here and one of them was to scan and write about the old family photos I have inherited. Now, I just need to do it! Thank you for sharing these little pieces of history.
a great topic of interest for me.
my whole family on my mom’s side is photographers. my grandfather gave us each the bug, and a camera.
my most treasured possessions are his old family photos that clue me in to that part of me that feels very foreign since we aren’t big talkers about the past in my family. i pore over the old photos and pick out family resemblances. love this post. thank you.