An unsual pose for an unusually beautiful child.
A photobooth photo from Germany. It was probably taken in the 1930s.
A Beautiful Girl
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Tag Archives: Germany
A Marcel Wave and Malocclusion
This photobooth pair look like a very happy couple. This gent has the broadest of broad smiles and a fashionable dress sense. With marcel waves in her hair and prominent front teeth, his young lady would not be considered a beauty, but the smile on his face suggests she has a spark that we, as distant observers, may not be able to see.
Without the benefit of modern orthodontic techniques, I too, would have this same problem with upper palate over-crowding. It is interesting to note that in a person deemed attractive, this dental phenomenon is termed an “overbite”. Those deemed less visually appealing, get the pejorative label of “buck teeth”. The correct dental term is, I believe, malocclusion.
There is a Pinterest board for sexy women with overbites, nearly all actresses who’ve long disappeared from our screens, Alan Alda’s character, Hawkeye, in the third season of the TV series M*A*S*H whistfully mentions Gene Tierney’s overbite as sexy but I doubt we will see anymore thespians with this appealing, characteristic given the universal propensity towards conformity through cosmetic dentistry.
This Germany booth pic is dated September 1935.
Please Help To Settle An Argument – UPDATE
In my previous post about this photo, I attached an image of the back. I suggested that there may be more clues as to the identity of the sitter, if only I could read German. I was convinced that the photo is of a man. My friends thought it was a woman. Now thanks to a reader, Wolff Postler, we have a translation of the inscription. Wolff writes –
As far as I could decipher it, the notice reads:
Meiner Logismutter
Möll(?) zum Andenken
an den fremden
Freiheitsbruder
Ludwig Rot…(?)This translates as “To my lodging mother Möll as a memory of the strange (weird) brother of liberty Ludwig Rot…”
The places marked by (?) are not readable.
Hope that helps – at least it confirms your speculation about a boheminan of some sort.
The translation confirms this to be a man who is seen and sees himself as strange. What “brother of liberty” meant in Pre-WW2 Germany, I cannot say. Hearty thanks to Wolff for making this interesting photo even more fascinating!
Please Help To Settle An Argument
I bought this 1930s photobooth photo thinking it was of a very unusual looking man with an even more unusual fashion sense – a bohemian, arty type. No one to whom I have shown the photo agrees. The argument is that a man of that era wouldn’t have hair styled in that way nor wear a hat, shirt or velvet coat such as these. What do you think?
The photo came from Germany and has this information on the back. I’d say the signature was Ludwig something, definitely a male name, but it may not be a signature at all. I’m sure there will be more clues to the identity of the sitter if I could read more of the inscription.
German Photoweigh – Master Bean – 14 October 1931
This has to be my favourite Photoweigh image and also one of my all-time-favourite photobooth photos. The reason I particularly love this image is that it reminds me of the wonderful comic character created by Rowan Atkinson, Mr Bean and his best friend Teddy.
Teddy is Mr. Bean’s teddy bear and perhaps Mr. Bean’s best friend. Mr. Bean often pretends Teddy is alive and he is often privy to Mr. Bean’s various schemes. I wonder what relationship the young man in the booth photo had with his bear, and what might have prompted him to take him to the booth for a photo? He looks a bit too old to be playing with a teddy bear, so perhaps it was taken to entertain a young child?
Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean, with his friend Teddy.
I had assumed that this Photoweigh photo was taken at a railway station in Frankfurt but on Googling the address Kaiserstr 67 (full address Kaiserstraße 67 60329 Frankfurt am Main – see picture of location as it looks today, below) found that it is part of a shopping street. Where the booth once stood is now the Yan Jing Chinese Restaurant.
More Photoweigh photo examples from the UK and Germany can be seen here, along with a detailed history of the booths written by David Simkin of Sussex PhotoHistory.
Another blogger of vintage photographs, Richard Overy, has found some wonderful examples of other Photoweigh photos from the UK from Barry Island. The links to those photos are below. I would also encourage you to explore more of Richard’s found photo blog for more interesting old photographs.
http://lostandfoundphotographs.wordpress.com/?s=barry+island
Yan Jing Chinese Restaurant is currently located where the Photoweigh Photobooth stood in the 1930s
1934 German Monthly Travel Pass
I bought this as a German drivers license but it is actually a monthly rail pass. As it was very cheap and collected solely for the photobooth Read More
Zoe’s German Half-Sister
The Housewife’s Journal – Novelty Framing
I find this dour faced lady fascinating in her determination to keep the same unsmiling expression in her three excursions to a photobooth. I wonder if she kept up this photographic po-face for her entire life?
Despite this lack of humour I do like her face. She reminds me of a favourite English actor, Zoe Wannamker. I struggled to find photos of an unsmiling Zoe. She seems to have a naturally sunny disposition. She is beaming happily in most of the Google images I could find but you may be able to see the resemblance in the two pictures below.
I tried to decipher the wording from the bottom of the novelty photo and use a translator to work out what this says. I am not familiar enough with the German language to make good guesses where the text is unclear, so was unsuccessful. Can anyone out there help me?
A Pair From Germany 1941 And 1945
This pair came in a bulk lot of passport photos from Germany. One cannot imagine the experiences of Read More
German Girl Series
This is another lady whose beautiful face and eyes draw me in. She is from Germany and given the cloche hat the date of the photos must be the 1920s.
This series of eight photos (many of the earlier booths took eight consecutive shots rather than the four we see today) is unusual due to all the original number being present. They look to be perfect for an animated gif but I thought I would try the slideshow option to see how that looked. If you hover over the image a control bar appears and you can fast forward through the images to get a bit of an animated feel. The original photos are below.
Fox Head Stole
I love these two images from 1930s Germany. They remind me of my maternal grandmother who had a fondness for fox in the same era in Australia. I wore her arctic fox fur muff and matching stole to many costume parties when I was in my late teens.
She also had a grey fox stole whose little mouth was a clip that attached to the tail, as it seems to do in this lady’s example. Despite the fact they are desperately not PC, I mourned their loss when I discovered they had moulted completely while in storage during one of my forays overseas.
Looking at this woman I uncharitably mentioned to a friend that she looked a bit like a fox, but my companion could not agree. “Nope, Kat, not a fox. Definitely a ferret.” Either way we agree that she has something of a small furry creature about her, that ties in well with her fashion choice.
Photobooth Journal 