Hi Joan. Trying to make contact with you concerning the earliest photograph of Elizabeth Keckley. You were communicating with Kyle Savage from Bulrushes Media on this subject in the past. I am now the sole owner of Bulrushes Media and am seeking permission to publish your photograph with Kyles work that is already assigned to me in my book, "The Lincoln Family Photograph, Moses in the Bulrushes". Your photograph is the best forensic comparison to my unpublished photograph of her and would be extremely helpful to my book and the Keckley legacy you have done so much to enhance. Please contact me at jpmorgan912@gmail.com or Jay Morgan 515-451-7868.
I really hate this spookification of twins . They are actually not spooky what is spooky and insensitive and just plain crass is the dressing of twins in identical clothes . It is hard being a twin because people see you as a twin first and then maybe if you are lucky as a human being . As the mother of twin boys whop have struggled to have their own identity and just be themselves I am heartily sick of this objectification of people who happen to look like each other .
May 11, 2016 at 1:24 AM
This is one of my favorite posts about vintage photographs in my collection. It was originally posted six years ago.
[Image]
Long
before she killed herself in 1971 at the age of 48, (pills, slashed
wrists, found in the bathtub two days later), the photographer Diane
Arbus told a friend she was afraid that she would be remembered simply
as “the photographer of freaks.”
Today that’s exactly how she is
remembered for her searing, macabre photographs of “deviant and
marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus
performers) or else of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal,” as
one biographer described her favorite subjects.
But one of her
most famous photographs (on the left above) is not of circus freaks or
mentally challenged people, but of identical twin girls taken in
Roselle, N.J. in 1967.
This eerie photograph of young sisters
Cathleen and Colleen Wade has been copied and echoed many
times—including in Stanley Kubrick’s film ‘”The Shining” with its twin
girl ghosts. In fact there’s a TV commercial on right now (for kitchen
appliances) with a pair of similar sinister girls.
A print of
Arbus’s twins was sold at auction for $478,000 in 2004 and a couple of
months ago I saw another one at the AIPAD photography show in New York
that was priced at around $275,000 for a tiny print with Arbus’s notes
on the back.
Let’s face it, there’s something intrinsically
spooky about twins—especially identical twins—because it’s shocking to
see the same individual, the same face, doubled and standing side by
side. Maybe that’s why I (and many other collectors) love to find
vintage photographic images of twins. They always seem to look like
something out of Stephen King.
The 1/6 plate daguerreotype, #1,
that I have above next to the Arbus twins, is my favorite dag ever. In
my opinion it’s just as good – if not better -- than the Arbus image.
The two little girls, who were photographed in the 1840’s or 1850’s,
look amazingly like the twins from New Jersey. Compare the faces of the
girls on the left in each photo.
The stern young ladies in image
#1 are each holding a daguerreotype case inlaid with mother of pearl,
and they wear identical gold-tinted pendents and dresses.
(In
vintage photos it’s very common for siblings—not just twins -- to be
dressed alike, because Mom would buy a long length of fabric and then
the dressmaker would come around to stitch up clothing for all the kids
from the same bolt of cloth.)
These are some of my prize twin
images—all of them spooky. In the early days of photography, people
were not only intimidated by this modern invention, they were warned not
to move—certainly not to smile—because it would blur the image.
Children were often strapped into a chair with their heads in a brace.
No wonder they often look terrified!
[Image]
Images
1 , 2, 3, 4 and 5 are all daguerreotypes—the very earliest
photographic process. Don’t you love the dour sisters in the
checkerboard dresses in #3 (not a flattering pattern!) and next to them
the long-faced girls in plaid. The sisters in image 5 I suspect,
because of their somber clothing and jewelry, may be in mourning.
[Image]
The
girls holding books in image 6 are not identical, but the men in image 7
are mirror images of each other. I love how their top-knots curl in
opposite directions. (Six and 7 are ambrotypes—negative images on
glass—popular from 1854 to 1865.) People were always worried about how
to pose their hands in these early days, and the photographer would
arrange hands awkwardly like the ones you see here.
[Image]
The
two women in image 9 may not be twins, or even sisters, but I cherish
them because they are feminists from the mid-1800’s! Written in the
case behind their daguerreotype is this: “Mary, you and my self are
still left single/ while others are double and full of trouble. Your
KPL”
[Image]
Photos
11 to 14 are tintypes, which became popular during the Civil War
and continued into the 1900’s. The girls in 11 and the boys in 12 have
high button shoes, and the ladies in #14, in ruffled skirts, are posed
in a photographer’s studio. Check out the bathing beauties in #13, on a
holiday at the seashore (but posed in front of a painted canvas
background.)
[Image]
The
toddlers in # 15 are boy/girl twins. (Boys wore dresses until after age
5.) Their mother has written on the back of the cabinet card “Twins.
Left, Louise Bertha Inez Forte. Right Louis Bertrand Forte. Born June
13th, 1893 at 2 p.m. in West Newton. Louis was born 5 minutes after
Louise.”
An equally helpful relative noted the names of the young
flappers in image #16, who look very chic in their cloche hats, as
“Alice Antoinette Howland and Harriet Alma Howland, 1926.” Their
relaxed pose in their fur-collared coats makes for a beautiful portrait,
but none of the twins can compare to my ghostly, sour-faced girls from
170 years ago in image #1.
"Diane Arbus and Spooky Twins"
2 Comments -
Hi Joan. Trying to make contact with you concerning the earliest photograph of Elizabeth Keckley. You were communicating with Kyle Savage from Bulrushes Media on this subject in the past. I am now the sole owner of Bulrushes Media and am seeking permission to publish your photograph with Kyles work that is already assigned to me in my book, "The Lincoln Family Photograph, Moses in the Bulrushes". Your photograph is the best forensic comparison to my unpublished photograph of her and would be extremely helpful to my book and the Keckley legacy you have done so much to enhance. Please contact me at jpmorgan912@gmail.com or Jay Morgan 515-451-7868.
May 7, 2016 at 10:51 AM
I really hate this spookification of twins . They are actually not spooky what is spooky and insensitive and just plain crass is the dressing of twins in identical clothes . It is hard being a twin because people see you as a twin first and then maybe if you are lucky as a human being . As the mother of twin boys whop have struggled to have their own identity and just be themselves I am heartily sick of this objectification of people who happen to look like each other .
May 11, 2016 at 1:24 AM