This is John Capewell’s eldest son John, Junior who looks like he’s in some sort of body cast. I’m not sure if it was the result of an accident or maybe some corrective measure was taken for curvature of the spine. Whatever the case was, it looks as if young John had difficulty remaining still for the glass negative’s slow exposure.
After I saw these pair of negatives, I noticed that John, Jr. appeared sort of bent in some of the family portraits his father took. He appeared perfectly fine in the baby and toddler pictures so I’m wondering if this was the result of an accident.
It looks like Dad wanted to document this front and back. It certainly looks like it was a miserable situation for parents and son. Poor guy.
About The Capewell Glass Negative Collection
The Capewell Glass Negative Collection is a series of about 200 5-inch by 7-inch glass negatives shot early in the 20th Century by John Batt Capewell (1878-1951) of Westville, New Jersey. John passed the negatives down to his son Henry who left them in his wife’s possession upon his passing. Henry’s widow didn’t know what to do with them and didn’t particularly want them so she offered them to my Dad who couldn’t turn down anything. Ultimately I wound up with them and thought I would one day have photographic prints struck from them. That didn’t happen, but I came up with the digital workaround of placing the negatives on a lightbox and rephotographing them with a digital camera. The “processing” was then done on a computer with image editing software. They came out better than I thought they would so I thought I would show them off to the world on this site. Many of these pictures have not been seen in a century, and I’m proud to be presenting them today.
At first, I did not know who the people were in the photographs. I have a box of ephemera that accompanied the negatives and snagged a few clues from that as far as the Capewell name. I did some research on the internet and had a few false starts and wrong turns, but the readers of these posts have provided a remarkable amount of research and detail. I’m amazed at what people have turned up sifting through public records and such!
Last Week: The George Washington Equestrian Monument
