bainarchive

Whats the contraption on the right?

This picture is related to this other Bain Collection picture, also unidentified:

same corner of the Bain office, with same contraption, showing more of it in the next room:

The device is a type of photo stand used to reshoot other people's photographs for their collection. It uses a mirror at a 45 degree angle so that photos pinned to a baord on a table can be re-photographed using a tripod mounted standard camera. These are the photos you see with all the push pin holes in them.

New York Times on August 25, 1931: "J. Walter Smith Dies; Magazine Editor. Was in Charge of American Edition of The Strand for Many Years. J. Walter Smith, for many years the editor of the American edition of The Strand, an English magazine, died on Friday after a long illness of tuberculosis, complicated with diabetes, at a private sanitarium in Rutland, Mass. He would have been 63 years old this Fall."

See my note on www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2163954914.

see also

Mrs Fred Welsh is Brahna Weinstein, a Jewish Russian girl who anglicised her name to Fanny Weston when her family moved to the East Side. For Freddie Welsh, see

The photo of Welsh and his wife appears to have been taken during their visit to the offices of the Bain News Agency. A rack of the Bain glass negative files is visible behind him. It is likely that the photos of Welsh posing on a rooftop were taken on the roof of Bain's building. Another photo of Bain negative file shelves:

As if Freddie Welsh's life wasn't amazing enough, he married a woman with some character of her own. Thanks for providing her name(s). Wish we knew more about her life. I'm wondering why the two of them would have been at the newpaper office, Wystan. Any ideas? Had he just won the title?

Why was she in the Bain Agency's office? People who are in love enjoy going everywhere together. (But she doesn't appear to have climbed up to the roof, for the photos that were taken there.)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Welsh

This picture is related to this other Bain Collection photo, also unidentified:

I created an entry for D. McDonald at Wikidata, please fill in anything more we find on him there. It links to his other photos in the Bain collection: www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q76564012