Author
|
Topic: looking back in time
|
|
|
|
|
Timebandit
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1448
|
posted 26 June 2003 09:02 PM
Our house is one of the older ones in the city -- built in 1912. There were some older, but many fell victim to the cyclone of 1912, which leveled much of Regina. Anyway, there is a cafe about a block and a half from here that has been in business for over 90 years, the Quality Tea Room, and they have a bunch of old photos of the neighborhood. I've glanced at them in passing, but haven't paid them much attention. We were waiting for a table to open up the other day, and the blond guy was perusing a photo when he realized it was our street -- and there was our house, the year it was built, sans ginormous pines, elms, etc. It doesn't look a whole lot different now. Very cool. (I also found out not long ago that most of the big old elm trees around here came from my great-grandfather's tree nursery...)
From: Urban prairie. | Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
'lance
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1064
|
posted 26 June 2003 09:48 PM
quote: I live in a strange pocket of BC's lower mainland that calls itself a "historic district." Most of the houses were built between 1870-1912, which is old for hereabouts.
I used to live in a somewhat similar neighbourhood of Victoria -- in a house designed a "heritage house" by the city, in fact. While living there I found and bought, in a poster store, a very detailed and painstakingly drawn aerial view of Victoria -- ca. 1889. Obviously this was an imagined view, even hot-air balloons being unknown in Canada at the time. (At Christmas we gave my dad the new Historical Atlas of Canada, which features a number of these aerial views. There was apparently quite a vogue for them between around 1880 and 1914 or so). It's fascinating -- you can recognize a surprising number of buildings. The old "birdcage" legislature stands in for the present-day version, which was built around ten years or so later. And nowadays "James Bay" refers simply to an old residential neighbourhood, but in this view it's there in its watery glory. Later it was filled and the Empress Hotel built on top of it.
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469
|
posted 27 June 2003 02:25 PM
Images were never really "true". We just wanted to believe that they were. They're produced in part by an objective machine, the camera, but also guided by the subjective organism, the photographer.Within a few years of photography's invention it was being used to create "ghost" photos (wherein a person, dressed all in white, would pose on the spiral staircase or parlour for only half of the exposure time). These photos were all the rage at the time, and many believed that they showed actual ghosts! Now granted, inexpensive computers, scanners and printers, as well as software like Photoshop, has made digital tinkering faster, easier, better, and within reach of the average person, and so we'll see more of it, but lying with a photo is older than any of us is.
From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
'lance
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1064
|
posted 27 June 2003 02:45 PM
Quite right. The USSR, of course, developed* photo-doctoring into a coarse art, but most every government cheerfully made use of it when it suited them. That supposed 'film' of Hitler dancing a jig upon being told of the conquest of Paris was a classic example -- made by simply looping a few frames of him taking high steps.For that matter, governments also used the art of lying without photographs. I've read, I don't know where, that owing to wartime censorship, not a single photograph of a corpse appeared in any newspaper in an Allied country (Britain, France etc.) during the whole of the First World War. I imagine much the same prevailed in Germany. But digitizing images makes it so much easier to make them contain whatever you want that we may be moving into a fundamentally different era. I don't know just what I think about this, though, or how to think about it, so I'll stop rambling. * sorry... [ 27 June 2003: Message edited by: 'lance ]
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Timebandit
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1448
|
posted 27 June 2003 04:31 PM
quote: worked on a renovation of the Balfour apartments in Regina 15-20 years ago. it had the first elevator west of winnipeg when it was built somewhere around 1910. the woodwork and craftsmanship was gorgeous. what was really neat was that some of the elderly residents were original first occupants of the building. told some great stories, and made pretty fine cookies too.
Oh, the Balfour! Know and love it. Right across the street from the church we went to, Knox Met, which, incidentally, was built on the foundation of one of the churches destroyed in the Cyclone of 1912. You can still see pock marks from flying debris on the foundation. My grandfather and parents knew some of the people who lived in the Balfour from church. When I was a little girl, my Dad brought some wild ducks to an old couple that lived there, and I went with him -- this would have been in the early '70s, and they'd lived there for ages. I remember the old woodwork, the chandeliers, the fancy elevator, the oriental rugs... It was like a palace, in my eyes. Yes, fond memories of the Balfour. That, and I pass it on foot at least once a week on my way to the farmer's market. It's gone condo, I know a gal who bought a small apartment there.
From: Urban prairie. | Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|