And the final slide from my father’s collection of ancient Kodachromes (see the full story, starting here) shows my Mother in Sacramento. Based on the difference in hairstyle and glasses from other pictures in the 1964 series, I’m going to guess this was taken several years earlier, probably in the late ’50s or even earlier in the ’60s. The bird, according to cousin Fern, was called Tina and said such things as “My name is Tina,” and “Dummy up Stewart,” to my Uncle Stewart. I think that style of glasses frame is back in.
Continuing with my father’s Kodachrome slides from 1957, New York (full story here), here are some portraits shot in Central Park, first of his sister, my late Aunt Ginger (her real name was Ella – guess why she was called Ginger) and 2 very different ones of my Mother, shot in different years, the bottom one, definitely 1957.
And now, back to my father’s Kodachrome slides (see story here). These next few are mostly from New York in 1957, except were noted. This one’s taken from the East side of the Turtle Pond looking West at the Belvedere apartments. This is an image I might almost have taken myself.
Our last image from Germany for now, a lovely pastoral scene along the Regnitz (I think). The last of the German scenes from my father’s collection of Kodachrome slides shot in 1955-56, for now, at least (see the full story here).
One of our final stops in Germany, Bamberg’s old Town Hall (Rathaus), I’m pretty sure. This is from the collection of Kodachrome slides my father shot in 1955-56 that I’ve been scanning and posting about for the last few weeks
Some more images my father shot on Kodachrome in Germany in 1955-56. The first is my mother pulling on a bell pull somewhere in the old town, the second a look, evidently at the cobblestones.
If interested in the project of scanning the old slides, you can read about it here. A brief technical addendum: as I mentioned in another earlier post, I am attempting a transition from Lightroom to Capture One. However, Capture One has far weaker retouching capabilities (you can only use one source area per layer and these slides needed massive amounts of retouching for hairs, stains and God knows what all). Therefore I worked on them in Lightroom and then exported as a catalog. Unfortunately, I discovered to my chagrin that while Capture One will import and interpret many types of image adjustments, rotation, flipping and retouching are not among them, so unless I export image files with the adjustments embedded in them and then re-import them (doubling the storage required for 300 high-res TIFFs) they’re not really useful to me in Capture One. Fortunately, because this is an archival project of images that aren’t even mine I don’t anticipate needing to work on them much again.
The old palace (Alte Hofhaltung) – I thinkBamberg, Germany
Some more pictures of the Bamberg area taken in 1955-56 on Kodachrome slide film by my father.
According to Wikipedia, “Bamberg extends over seven hills, each crowned by a beautiful church. This has led to Bamberg being called the “Franconian Rome” — although a running joke among Bamberg’s tour guides is to refer to Rome instead as the “Italian Bamberg”. The hills are Cathedral Hill, Michaelsberg, Kaulberg/Obere Pfarre, Stefansberg, Jakobsberg, Altenburger Hill and Abtsberg.” I’m not sure which of these are pictured below, or even if these are all churches and not some of the many Schlösser my mother told me about but couldn’t identify.
You can see the original post describing this slide-scanning project here.
Continuing with the Kodachrome slides my father shot in Europe in the mid-1950s (original story in this post), we remain in Germany.
According to my mother, Bamberg is known as Klein-Venedig (“Little Venice”) because of its canal, although Wikipedia suggests no canal but the River Regnitz and only a colony of fishermen’s houses from the 19th century along one bank of the river get that appellation. Here are a few snaps of the waterway, the middle one featuring my mother.
Continuing with the exploration of my father’s Kodachrome slides from the 1950s (see the original post here), we turn to Germany. Most of the upcoming images were taken in Bamberg, the town where my father was billeted in an apartment with my mother. They were there from approximately the summer of 1955 to the summer of 1956 with trips to England, Switzerland and around Germany in between.
We’ll start with a trio of images, I think all taken in the same spot, some kind of stone balcony overlooking the town, (perhaps at the Rose Garden?) with one portrait each of my mother, my father and my father with an army buddy my mother identified as Chet, “who came at the weekends and never left.”
Mom at BambergDad at BambergDad and Chet overlooking Bamberg
The bottom shot was a kind of monochrome greeny-yellow. I tried adding some warmth to it, not very successfully and made the sky bluish to add a little interest (winds up looking like one of those hand-tinted B&Ws). Needless to say, while I’ve been calling these “my fathers slides,” and it’s possible he set the camera up on a tripod, I think it unlikely he took at least 2 of these.
And now a return to some of my father’s Kodachromes from the 1950s (see the full story here). Let’s finish off the UK with a couple of family shots from Brighton. In the first, my mother is perfectly radiant in prime blue and red while all about her is dreary, monochromatic gray (requiring absolutely no Photoshop fiddling on my part – this is virtually out of the camera). In the second shot, my father chomps on a piece of Brighton Rock, a bright pink log of pure sugar with the words Brighton Rock in red running right the way through from one end to the other so you see them wherever you are in the days-long it takes to get through it. Note that everyone at “the beach” is fully clothed.
I’m not sure whether this was in the Tower or Windsor, but found it among the Kodachromes left by my father, the resurrection of which is recorded here.
A couple of London street shots from my father’s collection of Kodachromes from 1955-56. You can read the story of their digitization here. I really like the feel of the top image with its cool blues and grays and the backs of only a few people and no cars in the streets. A definite sense of urban desolation.
My mother shed no light on which trip these shots of Dover were shot on. Troop ship from Germany to England? Tourist excursion? A day in Calais? I warmed up the top one considerable and I think it looks a lot more realistic but I wasn’t there so perhaps the cold greys of the bottom shot are more accurate. Here you can read the story behind these Kodachrome shots my father took in 1955-56.
Where are all the people? And only a single Beetle on the street?
Another shot in front of Buckingham Palace from my father’s collection of Kodachromes shot in the mid 1950s on his Voigtländer (see the full story here).
I wonder if the top image isn’t at Windsor but judging from the hodge-podge of slides there’s nothing to suggest a trip to Windsor so I’m assuming this is also at the Tower. See this post for the story of these slides my father shot in the 1950s. I like the bowler and brolly man in the top image and the little boy out of an Enid Blyton story in the bottom one.
Update: my mother confirms (see comments) that the top photo was indeed taken at Windsor. So I suppose I should update the post title. The Two Towers?
Looks to me like the Spur Rd approach to Buckingham Palace (above) and The Mall (below). Another of my father’s Kodachromes from 1955 or ’56 (see full story here). Note the absence of throngs of tourists or cars or even lanes painted on the road.
