A box of 16 negatives and only a single date on the box, 1946. Stragglers of sorts, as on first sight, they don’t belong together.
A closer look though, reveals that these images relate well to previous blog posts. In short, they are all misplaced stragglers of sorts.
The first image I scanned stood out as it allows us to confirm few items about Joel’s darkroom.
It looks to me that this darkroom is freshly installed, brand new classic Omega D2 enlarger and the sink at right doesn’t have anything in it yet. A new looking contact printer is visible behind Joel.
All these SJC/COP art classes bear fruit, witness the sign on the wall. The photograph is one he made of “Genevieve’s kid” in 1947.
When I walked in Joel’s darkroom in April 2022 to pick up few items, I snapped following image.
Some 70+ years later, the sign is still there. Genevieve’s kid curly head has been replaced with Scott Foley’s first communion kid from the same vintage.
All this time, Joel used the same enlarger and the same contact printer. Joel took excellent care of his equipment.
Joel graduated in February 1948, so he had no longer access to the darkroom at COP, and had to provide his own equipment. The darkroom was a closed off section in the garage of the 524 W Walnut Street family home.
Continuing perusing box 35 negatives, I found following series from Mardi Gras, 1947.
There was one single straggler driving image in this box, most likely from the same event as covered in box 34, covering mostly 1948 events.
One image from an unidentified parade. Observe the police car with antenna in the image below.
Few image from the Circus that came into town in Stockton, these images are still identifiable as being near the Cemetery.
Joel photographed the girl on an elephant in Kodachrome. As we’ve seen on other occasions, Joel dragged a 35mm and a full size press camera to events.
Two images from one of Joel’s farm visits. He did photograph the goats on Kodachrome on the same occasion.
The next three images are from an unidentified COP event. I’m looking here for input from the community to identify what’s going on. The tables are numbered, there are blackboards, and we recognize administrators and students. And of course, there’s lots of paper.
The very last image for this post is one that is a bit of a creative mystery. No matter how you turn this image, there’s always a section upside down.
So, there’s a mirror involved turning the center image upside down.
So Joel is playing a joke on his viewers. The important observation is that he visualizes the conundrum, and makes the photograph. He didn’t pass up the opportunity.
A true potpourri of stragglers from other boxes, and possible some true 1948 images. This will be promising to sort this all out prior to archiving.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 