This is part a collection of posts that will feature images from my collection.
Northern Indiana Normal School, 1900
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| Graduating Women, Northern Indiana Normal School, 1900, Unknown Photographer, Valparaiso, Indiana; Image 3.75"x4.75" mounted on 4.6"x6.5" card; Collection of the Author |
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Verso: Valparaiso Indiana 1900 When we hear no more the College bell We'll think of the time when in Vapo we did dwell Those girls who number four The boys and girls will see no more They'll not forget that jolly set of Columbia hall Who always attended the College base ball And Lou -- those girls on the fourth of July Mid danger and crasle made the fireworks fly. Those jolly four whom all adore. Adieu 18 Col. Hall. Columbia "Akin" ← author |
This next image is also an antique shop acquisition to the collection. Close examination rewards the viewer with a playful genre scene. Four women appear to be dressed as men, sporting men's coats, collars, ties, and bowler hats. Two are holding tobacco pipes (at an angle that might suggest they haven't ever seen one smoked), tilted towards the camera. All four have spoons full of ice cream. That is enough to qualify this piece for my collection, but the original poem on back is the cherry on top.
This collodion print is very "blown out", so was digitally darkened for visibility. This brightness is a common problem with amateur flash technique, especially unique in this era. Notice the light areas glow, especially that jacket button, how the nearer faces have less shadow areas to create detail?
The author states the women pictured are finishing college in Valparaiso in 1900. This school opened in 1859 as the Valparaiso Male and Female College, named to emphasize its status among the first coeducational colleges in the United States. After closing during the Civil War, it was reopened and renamed in 1873, as the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute. The pictured women were likely the last class to have this bulky version of the name, as in 1900, it was changed again, this time to "Valparaiso College". Its final change to Valparaiso University persists today.
Interior amateur photography from this time period always amazes me. This image was created with a tripod, a plate camera, and a flash-powder-combustion light source (indoors!). This image may represent one lucky shot, but was most likely a challenge to create. Countless attempts may have been made before this one, faint image appeared! Add to this technical challenge, the staging of a "risqué" scene of women behaving as men (i.e. risking their "reputations"), and this photograph gains another level of intrigue. Were these women performing for off-camera people in the room? Did the photographer direct them/stage this situation, or did the women themselves? Or were they creating these images together in a private, intimate setting, the lingering evidence of intersexuality in photographic history, as were Alice Austen's works around the same time? Or, metaphysically, were they cheekily referencing The Treachery of Images twenty-nine years before its creation, the "pipe" isn't the pipe you think it is?
Who was the photographer? Who were the women? Whose idea was the image? Are there more? Who were these "Jolly Four Whom All Adore"? What happened to them after they left college? What do you think?
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