Lets Take a Trip Back...

...To before film was born...Ok so I guess technically film was born. On glass plates. Turns out I'm not the first photographer in my family. When my mom went to visit our Aunt Nony in Holland Aunt Nony started pulling out photographs that her Grandpa had taken during his career as a photographer. Of course like most photographers (at least...the good ones) their main subjects always end up being their families. Hence we have a pretty good photographic record of the Vanderstock family during the turn of the century. A time when it was fairly rare to have a LOT of photos taken of you and your family. My mom asked Aunt Nony if there were any photos that she could have to take back and show the cousins in Canada, and the following are the photos that Aunt Nony gave my mom, who has in turn...handed over to me. I can't wait to go back to Holland and look at the rest of these photos, and perhaps be given an opportunity to take part in the preservation and archiving of them, so that we can enjoy them for many years to come! Most of the following are albumen prints.

So my Great Great Grandpa Vanderstock lived in Leiden, Netherlands. He was a member of the Dutch army in the late 1800's.



When he was done with the army, he studied photography and eventually became a fairly well known photographer among the well to do people of Leiden. This is his business card:



Here is a picture of the man himself.



Like I said...he liked to take photos of his family. Here are one of the RARE ones where he is actually in the photo (this is totally posed):



This is the house that he raised his 6 kids in. 5 girls and one boy. He also ran his business out of his home....yes, those windows are facing north :)



Often his daughters became models for small cards that were customarily given out to guests when they visited:



Even they had babies melt down. Its funny that he still made the print of this one...I guess maybe it was his last plate and he was like "Whatever...another family photo with me not in it"



He loved to travel. This is a post card from when he visited new york in 1929. And yes...this is his actual hand writing on the back. Any of you read dutch?




The rest of these are pictures of his family as well as his children. But I want you to look closely at these! It is INSANE how crisp some of these shots are. And the lighting is just soft and buttery on a few. Think about the photos that were being taken in the turn of the century over here in america and canada....they were grungy...dirty...and well yeah. You get the idea. But these show us a little glimpse of where European photography was at the turn of the century. Pretty cool. Here are the last of the images, in no particular order.







The girl on the left of this photo looks EXACTLY like my mom did at this age!!







Look how sharp this one is!!







I love this portrait above.
This next one is a normal grad photo for a student at the University of Leiden. This is what they wore. My Great Grandpa hand tinted this.



Anyways, thanks for checking these out. Hope you enjoyed this little piece of my family history!