The Brown House, Box 79, 1949

The remainder of box 79 negatives plays in “The Brown House”, a women’s clothing store on 1700 Pacific Avenue, per Stockton City Directory of 1949.

Joel photographed the store display by night, and there are two young women he photographed in store outfits. In those days, quite a few stores had their own corner where a photographer could photograph with a decent backdrop.

This are the first images from Joel in something that resembles a photo studio with backdrop, apple boxes and lights.

Normally, the photographer would roll the background all the way out to create a seamless background. Joel is learning.

The names of the young women were not recorded on the negative box, so, until someone recognizes these young ladies, I’m in the dark as much as you do.

One thing is clear to me, Joel is after the Hollywood look with the latter portraits. All of the above images were printed at some point in time.

The light is nicely diffused, something Joel doesn’t typically have access to.

The next young women is equally unknown, I believe she equally poses in the clothing store.

Joel is clearly trying to figure out how to get a good portrait out of this model. Keep in mind, there was no instant feedback as with the current digital photography. You had to develop the film before know what you got. I can assure you that film photography is total suspense !

In the last image, Joel nailed pretty much the Hollywood movie look. He’s not using the most sophisticated portrait lenses, but this image passes the test.

Closing out this blog post with a few images of “The Brown House” window display at night.

This display is pretty impeccable. The information cards are hand written with pricing for each ensemble.

Last image for the day, a negative depicting a flood scene in Stockton, After some research, there was a good amount of flooding in all of Northern California in November-December 1950. I assume this image was taken at that time. (The 1955 flood was much worse … )

Next blog post we’ll see image spanning 1946-1951, all about 34 images in a catch-all box.

Cheers !