Public Asked to Identify Relatives Shown in Old El Paso Photographs

A photographer who chronicled life in the southwest captured the images but we don't know who all those people are who posed for the pictures. You may have the answer.

"[Construction] workers found a number of boxes of old negatives in a storage area when they were wrecking out the inside of the building and they took them to the pawn shop and asked whether they were worth anything," said Claudia Rivers of University of Texas El Paso's Special Collections.

Some 50,000 negatives photos are now part of a special collection at the University of Texas at El Paso. They're from a photography studio that for 70 years captured life on the border.

Dated but without names. So the university turned to the public to help solve the mystery. The photographs are displayed online, in the El Paso newspaper and at malls.  You can read more in the WFAA.com web site at http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa081227_lj_kochega.126bd519.html
.
My thanks to Jeri Steele for telling me about this story.

Comments

[J. Amy Newman]

Although the news article provides a link to DigitalCommons@UTEP database, the search features are not as useful as the Casalola Database Website itself, so be sure to check that option: http://129.108.99.94:200/casasola/default.htm
This seems to be the best way to browse multiple (up to 20) thumbnails at a time.

I was disappointed that neither of the UTEP or Casasola pages contain the date ranges of the photos or the story of their discovery. The "browse by year" option seems to pertain to the date the digital images were created, rather than when the photos were taken, which limits the usefulness of the database.

The following article contains more about the photo studio, which operated from 1921 to 1992: http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasPhotography/El-Paso-Texas-Beautiful-People-1921-1946.htm

[ML Wilser]

So now I have to _subscribe_ to a comment feed to read them? Not gonna happen. There are FAR too many "subscriptions" in the world, for which I have little time. I like to skim the comments, but subscribe? Naaah.

[Dick Eastman]

---> So now I have to _subscribe_ to a comment feed to read them?

No. Absolutely not.

Thanks for asking that question. Let's make sure that the new option is crystal clear to everyone.

The ability to read comments on this web site has not changed one bit. You can still read them in exactly the same manner that you have always have.

What is new is a brand-new OPTION to read them in an RSS newsreader. This is offered as a convenience for those who want to read them quicker and more easily than the old-fashioned way of opening a web browser. However, it remains as an OPTION. You now have a choice of two methods: the old way or the new way. The old way has not changed.

Thanks again.

- Dick Eastman