The adventures and various works of a photographer, road tripper, former patron of the local arts, aspiring app developer, and late night coffee drinker and conversationalist.
Dallas is home to a healthy community of photographers and photography studios in the digital era. While the widespread prevalence of easy, convenient cameras in everyone's mobile device makes everyday photography easier than ever, there is still a niche carved out for professional work when it comes to memorializing important events or, just as importantly, people. This was no less the case in the earlier days of photography, in the days before Kodak and the Brownie camera made picture taking easily accessible to the masses. The portrait studios that operated in the late nineteenth century captured images on plates of glass and produced printed vanity photos, or "cabinet cards," by the dozen for those seeking to memorialize their own likenesses, or those of their family members or families. But while these studios helped create a valuable record of many early communities, their own legacies have so often been erased by over a century of urban development, with little to no evidence left to recall their one-time locations near city centers. In this post, we're going to go on a sort of "walking tour" of several such locations in the city of Dallas, and take a look at the stories behind seven early Dallas photography studios.
The tour area
I recently purchased this large collection of 2500 35mm slides, mostly Kodachromes but also with some Ektachromes and Agfa specimens included. What kind of content is on these? I don't know everything exactly, but the dates range from the 1950s to the 1990s and the subjects appear to be everything from scenes of everyday life to travel to various random images. One thing that my "Ghosts of DFW Music History" blog series has made crystal clear to me is my need to assemble a collection of stock images from which to draw whenever I need illustrative content for one of my projects. And I can't realistically expect to have examples of everything I might want to use someday in the (admittedly sizable) collection of photos I've taken myself. Dealing with ownership and copyright concerns is a royal pain in the rear when I want to use someone else's material, so the opportunity to acquire a large collection of previously unpublished and unencumbered images at a low cost is something I didn't want to pass up. While I expect that only a small percentage of these will ultimately be of interest to me, even two or three percent will justify the cost of the entire set.
Updated October 9, 2024 with additional historical information
Whenever I shop antique stores, estate sales, or online, I'm always on the lookout for unique and original snapshots and slides. If it's a photo of somewhere I've been, or of a scene or situation I find interesting enough, then it's fair game as long as the price is right. And when it comes to places I've been, few vintage images are more interesting than those of my own hometown and surrounding areas. Here are sixty-nine rare images of DFW spanning every decade of the 20th century, all taken from my personal collection.
Houston Street Viaduct, 1945
The Houston Street Viaduct (originally known as the Dallas-Oak Cliff Viaduct) was constructed in 1911 to connect Downtown Dallas with the then recently annexed community and former independent city of Oak Cliff. It was built to replace earlier connections that were destroyed by the Great Trinity River Flood of 1908. The originally planned streetcar line that was intended to traverse the bridge was finally constructed more than one hundred years later, entering service in April 2015.
Heading into Downtown Dallas via the Houston Street Viaduct, 1945 (view from car)
Continue reading "DFW in vintage photos"
