I Need a Smoke (WWI-Era Photo Album)

On page 30 of the album, we have these two photos with no identifying notes, but I'm inclined to think we're still at the convention of the Epworth League South Bend District in Hobart, June 17-18, 1918.

In the first photo, apparently that young fellow is so desperate for a smoke that he's about to light up, not only at a religious convention, but in the presence of ladies. The only person aware of the camera, the man at left, looks at the photographer with an expression that seems to say, "Why on earth are you taking a picture of that?"*


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

I have a special place in my heart for pictures in which the subjects don't realize they are being photographed, and are just spontaneously doing what they want to do. I'm sure if that young lady at left had noticed the camera, she would have arranged her face more conventionally, and we would have missed this moment where her mind has wandered from the conversation and gotten lost in thought … or perhaps she's just really annoyed with that skirt she's trying to adjust.



The building behind them (in both photos) is probably the old high school on Fourth Street.


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*My notions of 1918 propriety may be mistaken.