Spring & Summer 1895, G.B. Cragin

Description

Photograph album (10.5" x 11.5") of brown leather embossed with gold lettering "Spring & Summer 1895, G.B. Cragin." The owner G.B. Cragin, a young woman photographer, documents her friends and their activities in the Skowhegan, Maine area. . Activities include: reading, picnics, candy pulls, hiking, a pillow fight, chopping wood, horseback riding, and eating apples. There are many shots of both women and men with bicycles, one of which is captioned the "bicycle brigade" that shows a group on an outing. There are also several images of a young woman holding a box camera. Most of the people in the photographs are identified by first name only. Place names included in the album are: Skowhegan, Mt. Tom, Mt. Kearsage, the Saco (River?), and Somewell’s Pond (?), and Clear Water Pond. Residences identified by name are Pine Point Cottage, the Varnums, the Old Coney House, and the Cragin House. Some images of interest are: a young woman with a camera with the caption "you press the button and the monkey does the rest," a parody of the Kodak advertising slogan, and a young man named "Donald" in patriotic attire posed astride a bicycle. Another image is of a group of young women with the caption "Tarbor’s Normals" which suggests that the photographer and many of the women shown in the album are friends and classmates. A number of captions are humorous in nature such as "The Lady and me," showing the G.B. Cragin with a skeleton with its arm around her shoulder. Many of the photographs are cyanotypes, and unfortunately, photographs from the latter half of the album have been removed from the pages.