Saturday Snapshots {September 19, 2009}

“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't
own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” ~ Harvey MacKay

{An incredibly pretty young woman smiles sweetly as her portrait is snapped in this photo from 1949. She is the embodiment of the end of the forties, in her look I see so many elements that those who adore this period now strike for with our own styles. Though the description below the shot simply says “Ma mère, my mother”, I fully believe that this strikingly beautiful lady could have been a model or actress, had she wished.}



{A lovely pair of young Italians pose in front of a rustically brick home. I adore his smart double breasted overcoat and round spectacles, as well as her crisply pressed collar and upswept mass of dark curls. The fact that she’s not looking directly into the lens adds something special to this shot, too. This point leaves me wondering, were they perhaps not romantically involved but instead relatives?}



{A man beams with pride as he holds a darling baby boy in his arm, circa 1947. Though it isn’t specified whether the child is his son, grandson or other relation, I like to this it’s his first grandbaby.}



{Three young ladies clad causally in head scarves and pants share a moment of fun on a swing set. I adore this photo, it reminds me hanging out with my own girlfriends on the playground after our weekly Girl Guide meeting (which was held at an elementary school).}



{Vintage shots of couples kissing candidly in public are not particularly common, so it’s always a delight to encounter one such as this. Note her gloved hands and what looks like a cigarette nestled between her fingers, as she locks lips with this gent.}



{Two people are visited by a flock of pigeons as they stroll through Ultrecht, Netherlands in 1953. The saturated hues in this shot paired with the woman in the background sporting bright green coat make this shot almost seem like something from a circus or performance show.}



{The high level of adorableness in this late 1940s shot in undeniable, it’s also rather fun to imagine wandering through a group of deer en route to your handsome black car.}



{A group of people hang out on a beach pier in this summery shot from 1947. I especially like how you can see their colourful reflections in the water’s calm surface below.}



{A preciously sweet child sits sandwiched between two adults, neither of whom seem to be paying attention to her, in this fantastic candid bus shot which was taken by photographer Walker Evans who is well known for his contribution to the 1941 book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men”. This shot however originally hailed from a lesser known book entitled Many Are Called.}



{At first glance there is something sweetly pin-upish about this cute shot, but if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that it wasn’t taken with the intent of being risqué, but rather that the gal behind the lens snapped a photo of her friend as she finished putting her clothes back on after sunbathing. What leads me to think this? The neatly arranged shoes to our model’s left and the fact that this photo was captured on a rooftop with the woman situated on a towel.}

{All images above are from Flickr. To learn more about a specific image, please click on it to be taken to its respective Flickr page.}


My husband, the perpetually sweet soul that he is, sometimes feels a sense of melancholy when he looks at old photos or thinks about decades that we wasn’t a part of. The people from such eras, he muses, have often passed away or are quite elderly now, a point which saddens him a touch to ponder. I fully understand that perceptive and have shared similar thoughts too, but personally, in general, I like to focus on thinking about the time unknown people in vintage and antique photos had on this earth. The moments they treasured, the smiles they shone for the lens, the days and years that filled their lifetime, and what it must have been like to have experienced such bygone decades firsthand.