Lillian and I, Reading

This is another photo that breaks my collecting rules, since it features two women reading magazines, rather than books. I bought it because the age and setting of the photo are significant.



The clothing (particularly the high-neck, boned collars) and the hairstyle (a casual and simplified Gibson Girl pompadour) both suggest a date of ca. 1900–1910—which is relatively early for a photograph to be taken is a domestic setting, outside of a studio.



It is likely that the photo was staged, but (like this one) it is possible that the photographer was attempting to capture a typical setting for reading and it is highly likely that the reading material itself was genuine. (Unfortunately, as with the same photo, while it may be possible to identify the particular issue of the magazine below, I have not been able to identify it, and so the date remains a guess.)



By contrast, studio photos almost always appear to be taken with prop-books, books that belonged to the photographer and that are not actually being "read" by the subject of the photos in any meaningful way. (And, being props, it is likely that any magazine used in a studio photograph was as out of date as those found in waiting rooms today, and so they are unreliable guides to dating.)



On the verso of the photograph the two women are identified as "Lillian and I"—it is not clear if Lillian is the woman on the left, or if this is just the conventional grammatical form for the two women. The vendor was from from Hamilton, Ohio, and it seems likely that the photo was taken somewhere nearby.