Here is a mystery from
a 1928 convention report. The Messenger for July 31, 1928, spread across pages
4 and 5 - The Bethel family at meal-time. You can see W E Van Amburgh and J F
Rutherford at the head of tables on the far right of the picture. Below the
center pillar is a young Nathan Knorr. Two figures directly below him on the
table nearest the camera is a figure that has been drawn in. Who was in this
seat originally? Was it just an empty space that someone decided to fill with a
bit of art work? Whoever did the drawing gave the character hardly any
shoulders.
I will grant readers
that this is not the most important question in the world.
8 comments:
Maybe that was the seat of the brother who took the photo?
That's funny.
Now the picture has been re-sized you can no longer see Van Amburgh and Rutherford on the right, so you will just have to take my word for that. But you can see more clearly our "mystery figure."
If you click on the image, you will see the entire thing close up.
As an old time back in the day newspaper guy, I don't see this as drawn in. This image was reproduced off a matrix or "mat."
A matrix was a fiber-board inverted image into which hot metal was poured to make a printing plate. They sometimes produced very poor quality images.
At worst this is from a touched-up photo from which someone tried to make a sharper image.
It is doubtful that this was "drawn in." It owes its appearance to the method of reproduction and poor quality touch-up.
I don't know the technical details, and unfortunately I only currently have access to a scanned image - my original convention report is out on loan - but on the original this really does looks drawn - it stands out as fake. You wonder how they thought they could get away with it without readers noticing - particularly those peculiar shoulders.
As noted with the post, I do conceed that there are slightly more important subjects on the blog - but it got some comments anyway.
Does the face and head look drawn, or just the body?
Perhaps this fellow wore a vary dark coat, and in the original it looked like a floating head and shirt/tie triangle, so a jacket was drawn in to fix that.
Dane
The first one does look really fake like a drawing
but this is another one that looks fake... like they took a different pic cut it out and added this person in... (see how he is askew and angled weird) the light hitting his hair is also off
or it could just be the scanned pic wasn't totally flat and warped the angle of the pic?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v300/crimsonrose/meal_zps98778507.jpg
It's nice to know you are systematically working your way back through the blog.
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