Flea Market finds!!!

[claudiocambon]

The next best thing to making a good picture of your own may just be finding a good picture at a flea market. This is from the Montsweag swap meet, halfway between Bath and Wiscasset, Maine. I have no patience for the small stuff, but one of our friends who does waved me over, and boy, am I glad she did. This is an undated, unsigned magic lantern slide of Popocatepl, the volcano near Mexico City, sometime no more recent than 1900, I think. The name of the village is smudged and illegible.

The guy who sold it to me said he bought a whole lot of them from an estate, and has been selling them off for some time. Happy as I was to find this picture, I confess that it also made me sad to think that the entire opus might well have constituted a significant body of work, historically and aesthetically, that should have been preserved in its entirety for posterity.

At any rate, enjoy!

Claudio

[Ernest Purdum]

Flea markets can be rewarding. I have found two pictures with my father in them at flea markets.

[Greg Lockrey]

I wonder if it's part of a stereo pair.

[Wayne Lambert]

Great find! It's been years since I've been to Popocatepetl, but if my memory serves me correctly, the view in this photograph is to the southeast. About 11 miles northwest of Popo is the town of Amecameca, often used as a foreground for photographs of the volcano. Type Amecameca in Google Images and you can find photographs of a church identical to the one in your photograph. (As an example, visit geophysics.nmsu.edu/a_vez, and go to Hiking, Mexico, Feb., 2003.) As to the date and photographer you might check with Mexico's national photographic archives: Fototeca Nacional del INAH, Casasola s/n, Exconvento de San Francisco, Col. Centro, C. P. 42050, Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico. Their email is atencion.sinafo@inah.gob.mex.
Wayne Lambert