Here’s another one of John Capewell’s zany or contrived shots of a trio of fellows standing hither and yon in a wooded area. In my initial examination of these glass negatives I think I blew by this one having not seen the gentlemen for the trees. Now that I’ve looked at it more closely, I’m wondering if this is the same group of friends featured in some of my earlier posts.
I can’t make out facial features, but the gents look similarly dressed to the ones in the various quarry pictures. If these are from that same series, I doubt if this was shot in New Jersey. Sadly, there is not enough detail in the shot to offer even a guess as to the location.
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: King of the Delawares
Beatles mustache, striped pants, presumably bell-bottoms; Ali McGraw do and black sweater; and “Orange is the New Black” Chapman in what I at first thought was sweater and pearls, but turned out to be ribbed turtleneck. Appropriate mix of styles for the era. My year of graduation from high school. From that year forward, thanks to the Vietnam War, many people did not sit for yearbook photos.