Yukking it Up, 1920s-Style

Mrs. Connie Duran, a resident of Cousins Island, attempts an acrobatic move, ca. 1920.

What, pray tell, is going on here? Whatever it is, it looks like fun. And that’s not always the case with historic photographs of individuals. So many photographs from the 19th and early 20th century depict gruff, unhappy, serious-minded individuals that it’s easy to forget people could be just as goofy then as they can be today. A grave or formal aspect might say as much about early photographic methods that required subjects to stay still for extended periods of time than it did about any emotional state.

This ca. 1920 example comes from a series uploaded by an undergraduate USM student digitizing some of Yarmouth Historical Society’s substantial photograph collection. Several others depict general lounging around, games, and childlike play from island residents.

How refreshing that absolutely nothing more important is going on in these photos than what amounts to mugging for the camera. Surely history is as much about the small, relaxed, candid moments in our lives as it is about big events and momentous change.

Happy 224th, Louis Daguerre!

An early daguerreotype: Bathsheba Churchill Long, Buckfield, 1848. She was the grandmother of John Davis Long, Secretary of the Navy under McKinley.

Anyone who has ever taken a photograph–and that would be a fairly large percentage of the world’s population–ought to raise a glass today to Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.

Born on November 18, 1787, Daguerre is, of course, the inventor of the daguerreotype, and thus the father of modern photography.

Like any organization with historic collections, MHS is indebted to Daguerre for creating what would become today (little did he know) some of the most fascinating primary sources from the early part of the 19th century.

You can view a wide variety of daguerreotypes on Maine Memory–like the one pictured here of Bathsheba Churchill Long of Buckfield, taken less than 10 years after Daguerre’s invention–and via our PastPerfect online database.

(Stay tuned for more Long family items to appear on Maine Memory in 2012 when students at the Hartford-Sumner Elementary School in Buckfield, a recent grantee, digitize a variety of primary sources related to John D. Long and his father, Zadoc Long.)