oook, indeed

January 12, 2006 5:16 PM

The past can be a fascinating place. An Anthropologist by training and finder of interesting things by avocation, Hugh Blackmer, began rescuing old photos from antique shops on Nova Scotia (the former Acadia) several decades ago. He's now posting them on-line for his Nova Scotia Faces project. He's using Flickr and experimenting with a wiki. He's finding some wonderful old moments.
posted by mmahaffie (16 comments total)

Wonderful! Thanks for passing this on. I have a whole passel of photos that were just sitting around in our church and I love poring through them to try and figure them out.
posted by Biblio at 5:57 PM on January 12, 2006

Thank you!
posted by Miko at 6:15 PM on January 12, 2006

I do this too! I love finding old photos and postcards at salvage places. Groovy links!
posted by dejah420 at 6:42 PM on January 12, 2006

Beautiful! I love stuff like this!
posted by snsranch at 6:45 PM on January 12, 2006

Thank you. I love this stuff.

ndouvid has been posting an utterly fantastic found album on Flickr too. It's still coming in, truly wonderful.
posted by unSane at 6:46 PM on January 12, 2006

It's weird, and yet fascinating, to see how other people view the history of your home like this. As someone born and mostly raised in Nova Scotia, I can't imagine it being interesting, even in terms of historical record. But I think there's something about these kinds of extremely old photos which appeals to people, regardless of the setting. My family has "family photos" tucked away which are no different than these, and I imagine if most people looked into it, they could find such relics of their own past as well. But it really does make a difference to see a wide variety of them from the same general area.
posted by nightchrome at 6:56 PM on January 12, 2006

In viewing these links I can't help but think of the photography of Disfarmer who captured the "spirit" of Heber Springs, Arkansas at the turn of the last century.
posted by ericb at 7:13 PM on January 12, 2006

God, people were uglier back then.
posted by gottabefunky at 8:51 PM on January 12, 2006

God, people were uglier back then.

You know, I don't think they were. Compare apples to apples -- imagine looking at a random assemblage of American family snapshots from, say the 1990s. Plenty of ugly all around!

They just look ugly in a different way than we look ugly.
posted by Miko at 9:36 PM on January 12, 2006

Here's the best of the bunch
posted by jakeaust at 12:44 AM on January 13, 2006

God, people were uglier back then.

What a ridiculous idea. You're just used to looking at the Beautiful People the media want you to worship.

Great post -- thanks!
posted by languagehat at 5:32 AM on January 13, 2006

great stuff! thanks!
posted by amberglow at 5:41 AM on January 13, 2006

Many thanks for this....
posted by fluffycreature at 5:46 AM on January 13, 2006

Great find - thanks from this Nova Scotian.
posted by fish tick at 7:32 AM on January 13, 2006

This is excellent - thanks for posting this!
posted by carter at 11:06 AM on January 13, 2006

Hugh is an all-around awesome guy. Glad to see this post.
posted by Wolfdog at 2:55 PM on January 13, 2006