On this, the 100th posting here on the Photographs, Pistols & Parasols website, let me take you back in time today…
Imagine It’s 1898 and you’re a farmer with a large family living in Valley Falls, Kansas. One April day, you spot this ad in the newspaper:
A traveling photo studio in a railroad car?! Intriguing.
Hmm…
You’ve been meaning to take your family to get their photo taken – your mother and all the relatives back east haven’t seen your brood in a long time, not since your oldest, Charlie, was little Suzy’s age. Maybe the kids would get a kick out of having their photo taken in a train car. True, there are several photographers with regular studios in town where you could go instead. But.. … if the prices in the ad are correct, it will be cheaper to go to the Chaudet Art Company’s railroad car while they’re in town.
So, you ask your wife to get herself and your eight kids dressed in their Sunday best, and you put on your best suit yourself. Then, you all head down to the train yard.
When you get there, it’s easy to spot the Chaudet Photo Car, as you realize the drawing in the newspaper ad is exactly like what the photo car looks like in person:
University of Kansas Spencer Library, #KIC_RH_PH_72.49)
There’s already a long line of families waiting to have their photos taken — the Chaudets are doing a brisk business today!
Finally, after waiting for hours in line in the hot Kansas sun, it’s your family’s turn. Mrs Chaudet, the photographer, welcomes you, and then she and her assistant bustle about positioning you and your family in front of the camera. Your many family members plus the staff of the studio more than fill the train car/photo studio, making it rather a hot and stuffy affair as you and your family try to patiently wait until the camera operator is satisfied that everyone is in place for the photo.
By the time your family is all in position everyone is rather grumpy. Only little Suzy, on her mother’s lap, is still happy to smile for the camera:
Little do you know that the photo you have taken that day in the Chaudet Art Company railroad car will be purchased more than 100 years later by the folks who run the P3Photographers website.
P.S. This story about the family in the photo is purely a product of my imagination. There was nothing written on the back of this photo, which Chris and I bought on eBay earlier this year. So, we have no way of knowing who the family in the photo really is: i.e. if they were farmers, or how old the kids are, or even if all the kids in the photo are all the children of the two people seated in the photo. And the names of the youngest and oldest children are completely my own invention.
Also, I haven’t ever read a first-hand account of what it was like getting a photo taken in a photo car in a train yard. But I can imagine it would be kind of hot and stuffy in there, particularly with so many people packed together in a relatively small space. I mean, there are 10 people in that photo, plus there would have had to be at least one camera operator in the room while the photo was being taken.
[That being said, I would still love to own my own private train car, be it a photo studio or not, although I would want my modern train car to be air conditioned, which the Chaudet Photo Car wasn’t. ]
Anyway, regarding my fictitous story about the family in the photo, it is certainly true that families in Kansas would often have their photos taken to send to relatives back East. So, it’s a plausible reason that the family in the photo could have posed to have their picture taken.
I was really struck, though, by how most of the people in the image didn’t’ seem happy to be getting their photo taken. But getting your photo taken in a photo studio in a hot and stuffy train car must have been more than a little unpleasant, I guess, particularly on a hot day in Kansas.
BTW, I first mentioned the Chaudet family of photographers and their “photo car” in podcast episodes a few years ago. So, it was fun to find this example of a photo taken in the Chaudet Art Company Photo Car. It was also fun to spend a little time imaging getting your photo taken in that kind of studio.
Anyway, something a little different today to celebrate 100 posts here on Photographs, Pistols & Parasols.
