Unidentified Teenage Zombie

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Like her disgruntled contemporary, this teenage girl was forced to stand for a portrait in Showman's Gallery (ca. 1893-1898) to commemorate some special occasion. She endured the ordeal stoically … even catatonically.

The occasion was probably her confirmation or her eighth-grade graduation. (If it were her high-school graduation, I think her skirt would be longer.) She's holding her diploma, or certificate of confirmation, in her right hand.

The photographer didn't focus the camera quite right: the clearest part of the picture is her feet.

Unfortunately, there are no notes on the back to identify her.

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When I was a teenager myself, I bought a used (battered, really) book, Cartoon Cavalcade,[1] which I still have. It's a collection of American cartoons from 1883 to what was then (1943) the present. It includes this episode of the "Katzenjammer Kids" from 1904 that comes to mind just now:


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You'll notice that the photographer boys' command isn't "Smile!" — it's "Look pleasant!" The subjects respond with angelic, half-smiling expressions.

This makes me wonder what the photographer in Showman's Gallery said to that teenager, if anything, just before he pressed the shutter.

I did a tiny bit of online research into how we went from the serious expressions in photographic portraits of the 19th century to the modern obligatory smiles, and came across a number of interesting articles, including this one, which cites a more academic monograph arguing that Kodak marketing was responsible.

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[1] Simon and Schuster; Thomas Craven, ed.

L.K. Showman

The double mystery of L.K. Showman — (a) what his given name was, and (b) when he ceased to photograph in Hobart — has been partially solved by this obituary, apparently reprinted from a newspaper in the town where he died.


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Hobart Gazette 12 Dec. 1902.

So the "L.K." stood for Lorenzo Kyle. With that to go on, I can find him in Michigan in the 1860 Census, and in Tennessee in the 1900 Census. The intervening years he spent hiding from census-takers.

Still we are left with some conflicting information, since the Tennessee paper has him arriving in that state in 1897, but the Gazette Souvenir Edition, printed in May 1898 (and full of his photographs), speaks of him as a resident and businessman of Hobart. Which is more likely — that someone in Tennessee failed to recall, several years after the fact, exactly when Lorenzo arrived there; or that the Gazette, having received Lorenzo's payment for his inclusion in the Souvenir Edition (if that's how those things were arranged), went ahead and printed his biographical sketch as if he were present, when he was already just a memory? Either is plausible. I suppose for the moment we can't give a more precise end date for L.K. Showman's career as a Hobart photographer than "1897 or 1898." I have revised my notes on local photographers accordingly.

Young Woman with Glasses (Random Old Photo)

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We don't know who she is — nothing written on the back of this photo.

According to the Gazette souvenir edition of 1898, L.K. Showman opened his photography business in Hobart in 1893. It was still operating in 1898. I haven't yet found out when it ceased to operate; at the moment I'm guessing around the turn of the century.

Though the portrait doesn't show much of our young woman's dress, her sleeves look like the leg-o'-mutton style popular for much of the mid-1890s. I think she is in her teens — her face looks almost childish, but then she wears earrings and that elaborate dress; her hair is up, but adorned with a bow in back.