Friday, September 9, 2011

Who Was Delia? (Unidentified Glass-Plate Image)

Delia 1
Delia 2
(Click on images to enlarge)
Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.


The top image is identified only as "Delia"; the second not identified at all, but it's obviously the same young woman. Who was Delia? What was she, that our glass-plate photographer tried twice to reproduce her image? — local beauty? literary character represented by nameless model? flash-in-the-pan celebrity?

And if she was a local girl, why wasn't Delia herself available for photographing? And then who asked for the reproduction? I can think of several sad, romantic stories to explain all that … but people don't come here for fiction.

In the second image, you can see there's something printed in fancy lettering on the lower right of the page, but it's hopelessly out of focus and no amount of monkeying with the image can make it legible. At least, not with the poor monkeying tools I've got.

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