Dr. George Nelson was a veterinarian, with an animal hospital at 1234 N Wilson Way, Stockton, this according to the Stockton-Lodi City Directory of 1949.
We can’t be sure how Joel got to do this commercial photoshoot. Maybe Dr. Nelson knew Joel’s late father, Thomas Lawrence Dardis, a veterinarian himself.
The first three negatives however in Box 71 were sports related, Joel was once more experimenting with “special effects”. In the first two images, Joel played with shutter times to purposely blur the motion in such a way the stationary parts of the body are sharp, the moving upper torso is blurred, but still recognizable.
Last image from this track meet is a purposely double exposure without the camera moving. The shoe and lower leg become transparent for a somewhat ghostly effect.
The Dr. Nelson Vet Hospital images below, pretty much in order as I found them. Joel started out with a number of images showing the hospital as seen from the street.
For the next two images Joel steps back and shows the hangar in the back yard of the hospital office or living quarters from George Nelson. It is pretty obvious that this is a residential building with an animal hospital built in the rear
The next two images show us outside views of the hospital structure.
The rest of the images show us inside views of the hospital structure. Only then is it clear how massive this hospital really is.
The last image peeks in Dr’ Nelson’s surgery room. It is not clear how many of these images were printed or used for promotional literature.
There were quite a few more images in this stack, all duplicates of images we’ve shown already. Joel made sure he doubled up on shots, so this assignment was important to him.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 