I received the following note from Scott Cross, Archivist, Oshkosh Public Museum. Source location of the Beatrice Tonnesen scrapbook.
Wow, this is really impressive! This was quite the undertaking and it is great to see the final production. Great work Sumner.
Following is a reproduction and restoration of the personal scrapbook of Beatrice Tonnesen. The original is in the Oshkosh Public Museum, Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Scott Cross, archivist at the museum, was kind enough to provide access to scan the original and provided publication rights for this website.
The scrapbook is reproduced in the exact order as per the museum copy, however it is held together by a shoestring, literally. I believe that the original order was somehow not retained over the years, and obviously it doesn’t not represent a chronological progression. It has been scanned for optical character recognition, and so it is searchable for words and phrases.
I have used Scribd to host the document into this web site. The latency of presentation has varied, but it’s a big file, so give it a few extra seconds to do its work.
We’ve used Slideshow Pro for presentation of the Beatrice Tonnesen slideshows. It’s a Flash based player, and combined with their server-side media management component has made it a breeze to upload and include images and slideshows into web pages. Then along came Apple’s refusal to support Flash on the iPhone. It got worse with release of the iPad. Finally Slideshow Pro has released their new server-side product which supports non-Flash devices, allowing the Beatrice Tonnesen slideshows to now be viewed on the iPhone and iPad, anywhere and everywhere.
This is the eye of a beautiful, happy young woman photographed by BT around 1910. When I have the opportunity to do a proper scan on an image produced by a high quality camera, such as BT usually used, I can get to this level of digital detail. It’s far greater detail than can be seen on the web slideshow, and even far greater detail than most people would casually see on the original image itself.
In many cases the lens of the camera catches details that are hidden behind imperfections in the development solution and printing process. Often, as in this eyeball, you can see the reflection of what appears to be the natural studio lighting with possibly some added lights, and the shadow of the camera and photographer in the middle. [Click on the image for an even closer view.]
The eyes are always special to me. I try to give them extra attention, because I know that I’m the only one who has looked into these eyes from so close in maybe 100 years. And nobody may ever look again. While I don’t give the whole image as detailed of a cleaning for basic web and preservation prep, out of respect I give the eyes special attention. It’s my way of saying “Hello and thank you.”
I doubt that someone will be able to look into my eyes at this close distance in 100 years.
I believe this photo was taken in late 1920 or possibly early 1921. It appeared as a colored print copyrighted 1921 by The Munsingwear Corporation, Minneapolis on an advertising fan. The example in my collection also advertises The Idaho Department Store, Twin Falls Idaho.
The March 2010 Chicago Magazine article on BT is now posted online here.