imajgin's Photography Showcase

Vintage Photography at Imajgin's

Jim & Ginny sell nineteenth and early twentieth century photography. We sell privately and on online sites such as Goantiques.com and eBay under the seller name of imajgin. We offer daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, carte de visites, albumen prints, stereoviews, real photo postcards (RPPC), cabinet photos, and other types of photography.

Vintage Photography's Table of Contents

Slide Show: Pennsylvania Stock Car Racing Album
Websites for Researchers of Early Photographs
Photographer Van Oeyen by Margaret Bourke-White
Reverse side of photograph of Van Oeyen
Imajgin's Featured Photography Listing
Currently in our eBay store:
Books about Daguerreotypes on Amazon.
Imajgin's Fine Art Photography Books
RSS feed: Read Ginny's blog.

Slide Show: Pennsylvania Stock Car Racing Album

Sanatoga Speedway, Dorney Park, & Hatfield Hi Speedway.

A great album of photos compiled in the 1950s by LeRoy Stoudt. Many of the black and white glossy photos are handcolored. Run your cursor over the image to make the controls appear for the slide show. If you click any image, you can access more information and larger views up to 1,024 pixels wide on my Flickr Photostream.

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Websites for Researchers of Early Photographs

Useful websites for researching 19th century images.

The Circus Historical Society: Circus Historical Society website provides information on an organization dedicated to recording the history of the American circus.
Daguerreian Registry Home Page: Research on early American photographers, daguerreotypists, 1839-1860
Famous People: Victorian images of famous people from the UK and Ireland.
The Daguerreian Society: The Daguerreian Society, dedicated to the art, history and science of the daguerreotype. Features galleries, extensive resources, and information about the Society
Abraham Lincoln Historic Civil War Photograph Archive Collection from Library of Congress- Abraham Lincoln Art Gallery: Free historic photograph collection of Abraham Lincoln Civil War photographs from the Library of Congress. Presented by the Abraham Lincoln art Gallery for preview and download.
Tips on dating U.S. postcards: Tips for determining when a U.S. postcard was published
Home Page Magic Lantern Society: We are a membership organization of about 150 people from the United States, Canada, and the rest of the world. We are interested in magic-lanterns – the early projectors that gave delight to millions and eventually led to the movies.

Photographer Van Oeyen by Margaret Bourke-White

Reverse side of photograph of Van Oeyen

Imajgin's Featured Photography Listing

Bourke White Photo of Sport Photographer Van Oeyen #110

A glossy black and white photograph of the Cleveland based photographer Louis Van Oeyen (1865-1946) that is interesting in that it is a photograph of a photographer who has a place in the history of American photography taken by another photographer who has an even bigger name in the history of American photography: Margaret Bourke White.

We have two similar photographs of Van Oeyen by Bourke White that we are running in separate listings on ebay. This is the one that is marked No. 110 in the Van Oeyen stamp on the back and Van Oeyen is looking toward the viewer's left. It measures 7 3/16" by 9".

Louis Van Oeyen was the first staff photographer hired at the Cleveland Press in 1901. His great love was baseball. He became the official photographer for the American League in 1908 and for the World Series until 1922. The Western Reserve Historical Society Library owns a collection of his work.

On the photograph back is printed Van Oeyen's stamp with his name, "L. Van Oeyen." as can be seen in the accompanying pictures. The line for subject is filled in with the following: "Photo of Van Oeyen by Margaret Burke (sic) White Dec. 15 -34 Made in Cleve. when Marg. B. W. operated here." The spelling of Bourke White's name is given as it appears on the back. The hand of the writer is the same hand that has filled in the information on other Van Oeyen photographs in our possession. I assume that the person who filled in the information on the back stamps of all of our Van Oeyen photographs was Van Oeyen himself.

The question is did Van Oeyen or Bourke White print this photograph? Did Bourke White print it and give it to Van Oeyen and he stamped the back and filled in the information? I can't imagine that Bourke White gave Van Oeyen the negative and that he printed it himself from the negative. Or did Van Oeyen make a copy from a Bourke White print? Is this Bourke White's original print or is it a copy of Bourke White's original print printed by Van Oeyen? If so, why would Van Oeyen make a copy of Bourke White"s print? If this was printed by Bourke White, would she have signed it or marked it herself? Was it a Christmas present to Van Oeyen?

In any event, the worst case scenario is that Van Oeyen made a copy of Bourke White's photograph of Van Oeyen that was given to him by Bourke White. The best case scenario is that this photo was printed by Bourke White and given to Van Oeyen who stamped the back with his own stamp. If there isn't any identical Bourke White photograph of Van Oeyen that was signed by her, then that might indicate that this was the only example and was printed by her. We did compare the photograph to the other Van Oeyen photographs that we have and have noted that none of the others in our possession are printed with this size of white border. The others have thinner borders or no borders. If it was printed by Van Oeyen, then it seems logical that it would match up in format to other photographs printed by him. However, we don't have a very large sampling with which to compare them nor have we seen any photographs that were known to be printed by Bourke White in the time period when she worked in Cleveland.

We don't know the answers to the questions that I have raised. We do guarantee that the stamps and information on the back are Van Oeyen stamps and information put there by Van Oeyen or an assistant. Perhaps someone else out there who is reading this will know more than we do.

The condition of ths black and white silver photograph is excellent and can be seen in the image that accompanies the listing as well as on this Squidoo page.

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