Last year I took a class on writing about photographs from Barbara Krasner. I have hundreds of old photos of people and places I don’t know. The class helped me understand that there is a lot to be learned by looking long and carefully at a photograph.
One photo I have is this portrait of my grandmother’s family from the late 1800s. As a child, I’d glanced at it once in a while but my mother Eva never told me about the people in the picture. I don’t know whether she could identify everyone. She knew that her own mother, my grandmother Helene, was the youngest child of a large family, so she must be the girl seated front and center, wrapped in a boa. Her parents, Adolf and Rosa Löwy, are seated in the middle row and most of the rest are her siblings. By the time my mother would have seen this photo, only her uncle Max was still alive – her grandfather and aunts died before 1920 and her grandmother died before she was two years old.
Recently, I spent time studying the photo, trying to figure out everyone’s identity. I have a photo of my grandmother’s brother Max probably from around 1890 that looks like the young man on the right, but without a mustache. Since there was only one son, I realized that the man standing at left must be my grandmother’s brother-in-law, Julius Zerzawy. It had to be Julius because not only did my mother have a copy of this photo, but her cousin Paul Zerzawy did too – this was as much his family portrait as hers, showing his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncle. Looking on the back of the photo, I saw it was taken in my grandmother’s hometown – on back is stamped: "Photografisches Atelier Gustav Laube, Bilin."
Julius and Ida married in Bilin in August 1894 when my grandmother was 7 years old. I believe that this photo may have been taken to commemorate that event. Everyone is dressed in their finest clothes. My grandmother Helene and her sister Irma were schoolgirls and wear matching plaid dresses. A dog is trying to nose its way into the photo. Paul Zerzawy was born in 1895 – since he isn’t in the photo it must have been taken before that date.
Ida died in 1902 due to complications from childbirth after having 4 children. The following year Julius married Ida’s sister Mattl, or Matilda. I am not sure which woman in the portrait is Ida and which is Mattl. If it’s a wedding portrait, perhaps Ida is in the center. The other two adult sisters are on the sides and appear to be wearing matching gowns. The woman in the center wears something a bit different. Her parents are dressed formally. Her mother appears to be wearing a black gown.
Recently, I decided to contact Sherlock Cohn, a woman who deciphers old photographs. One of my questions for her is to help me identify Ida and Mattl with more certainty, using other photos I have of these women.
As I was preparing my questions for Sherlock, I tried to provide as much information I could about the people in the photo – names, ages, dates of death, etc. As I gathered all I the details I knew about the siblings, I realized that one of them, Clara, had died in May 1894, a few months before the wedding. Perhaps this wasn’t a wedding photo at all? That’s when I realized that a sibling was missing from the photo. Until 1894, my grandmother had six siblings, one brother and five sisters. However, in the photo there are only five sisters including my grandmother (Ida, Matilda, Flora, Irma, and Helene). That may explain Ida’s mother’s black dress. Although the photo may in fact have been taken for the happy occasion of her eldest daughter’s wedding, the loss of one child was still fresh for all of them.
I felt the loss myself when I realized that I don’t have a photo of my grandmother’s entire family. Perhaps that’s one reason they took this photo – to have a record of the entire family before anyone else died.
Despite the sense of lost history, I felt a thrill at figuring out on my own that this photo was likely taken in 1894 – the year one sister was lost and a brother-in-law gained.
I was amazed at how much I could learn by truly looking at the photo – spending time examining every detail. Do you have photos of your own that have secrets to reveal?