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
Bookmarks