Tag Archives: photographs

The photography of James Crookall

Posted on May 24, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Thanks to funding provided by the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives, we have been able to describe and digitize over one thousand of James Crookall’s images and make them available online.

James Crookall was born November 7, 1887 in Preston, Lancashire, and came to Vancouver as a child. Throughout his life, Crookall was an avid amateur photographer and an enthusiastic outdoorsman. He was an active member of the Vancouver Photographic Society and regularly exhibited his photographs in international salons. He died on July 27, 1960, and his fonds was donated to the Archives by Mrs. Doris Crookall in 1979.

self-portrait

Self portrait, 1938. Reference code AM640-: CVA 260-978.

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Posted in Digitization, Holdings

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Buildings on the beach side of Beach Avenue

Posted on May 10, 2013 by | 2 Comments

Earlier this year, Harry Swain of Victoria donated a photograph to us and it caused great excitement. Here it is:

image of Beach Avenue

View from the Sylvia Court Apartments, May 18, 1913. Reference code AM1376-: 2013-002.1

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Our students – Dorcas Tong

Posted on May 2, 2013 by | Comments Off

My summer internship at the City of Vancouver Archives was filled with wonderful experiences along with the occasional adventure, so much so that it has taken me a while to catch my breath and finally write about it. As a student in the Master of Art Conservation program at Queen’s University, the Archives fostered an ideal learning environment for a conservator-in-training to reinforce the skills acquired through the past academic year. I was fortunate to learn from not one but two experienced conservators. Working under the supervision of Sue Bigelow and Rosaleen Hill, the Digital Conservators at the Archives, I had the privilege of taking in a double dose of valuable knowledge.

The Award of Merit 1943, one of the many spectacular works of art found in the Archives. This image consists of merged photographs of the parchment before (left) and after (right). treatment.

The Award of Merit 1943, one of the many spectacular works of art found in the Archives. This image consists of merged photographs of the parchment before (left) and after (right). treatment.

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Cats in the Archives

Posted on March 21, 2013 by | 2 Comments

It appears that people have always taken photos of their cats to share; it’s not just a Web obsession. Here are a few that made their way into the Archives–feel free to download the images and superimpose your own captions.

This is a formal studio portrait of a three-year-old boy. Perhaps the cat helped to calm him and keep him still, although at this early date the child might have been tied to the chair or held in a clamp.

George Allan Velton and cat, July 29, 1867. Reference code AM336-S3-2-: CVA 677-292

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Spotlight on volunteers – Sean DeMaio

Posted on December 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Sean DeMaio volunteered for us for three months in the fall of 2012. In this short period of time, he spent 100 hours at the Archives while still working at the Women’s Health Research Institute at the Research Branch of BC Women’s Hospital. Sean holds a Master’s degree from SFU in Health Policy, where he researched recruitment incentives of physicians in rural BC for his thesis. This led to his involvement in several interesting health research initiatives, such as doing research and writing a report showing the cost effectiveness of live music therapy for patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Health research work provided experience with data analysis and information management which is what Sean would like to refocus his career on. Volunteering at the Archives was a first step and getting a Masters of Library and Information Studies degree will be the next.

Catalogue card drawer CANADA A to CHI – conquered by Sean!

Catalogue card drawer CANADA A to CHI – conquered by Sean!

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Remembering . . .

Posted on November 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

. . . the preparation . . .

29th Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force training at Hastings Park, 1914. Stuart Thomson photo. Reference code AM1535-: CVA 99-155

Recruiting Station at Victory Square, 1941. Photographer unknown. Reference code AM54-S4-: Mil P265

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The Archives continues ‘pinning’ content to Historypin!

Posted on September 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

This isn’t the first time we’ve blogged about our Historypin page. We’ve recently taken the time, however, to add a number of new features to our Historypin Channel. In addition to over 200 new photos, we’ve added a number of site-specific moving image files from the 1920s to the 1970s!

Here is a screenshot with one of our photographs ‘pinned’ in Street View. Using the ‘Fade’ bar on the left you can fade out the archival image to see what that intersection looks like in Street View today.

One of our summer interns, Jesse Cumming, identified 200+ photos to add to our Historypin Channel. He also created a couple of unique “Tours” (click on the “Tours” tab to view). The first is called Vancouver in Motion and collects all our newly added moving image clips. The second, A 360° trip down Burrard, brings together photographs from the City of Vancouver Transportation Division, to create a tour down Burrard St. from Broadway to Hastings, showing 360° views of intersections along the way. Continue reading →

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Spotlight on volunteers – Maggie Linardic

Posted on August 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Maggie Linardic has been volunteering at the Archives for over a year now. Maggie holds a Fine Arts degree with a major in photography from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Currently she is enrolled at Langara College in the Library and Information Technology Program. Combined with her interest in photography she became aware of volunteer opportunities at the Archives through another volunteer, Helen Lee: thank you Helen! Through her experience working at a small art gallery and studio, Maggie arrived at the Archives and the Langara Program with experience cataloguing artworks.

Maggie with a binder of photo descriptions and photocopies of original photographs! Read on to find out about the Binders project.

The Archives has set up a variety of projects for Maggie, allowing her to gain more cataloguing experience and have some fun handling photographs and negatives. Maggie created item-level descriptions for many of the photographs in the Leslie F. Sheraton fonds. This is a large collection of photographs so this project is a work in progress – some slides are still awaiting titles. The grant-funded scanning part of this project has been completed. The Archives is excited that our new database permits us to offer the scans we create in higher resolution than before. Continue reading →

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Panoramic photographs: the Number 8 Cirkut Outfit

Posted on June 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Part of an occasional series on the W.J. Moore panoramic photographs.

We have previously featured W.J. Moore’s panoramic photography and his life.  Here’s a look at the type of panoramic camera and film he used and some of the unusual features of the photographs it produced.

The best-known and most widely used of the rotating-film panoramic cameras was the Cirkut camera. Capable of shooting a 360° view, it was patented in 1904 and sold until the 1940s. It was not easy to use, and so was purchased mainly by commercial photographers. Some photographers shoot with well-maintained Cirkut cameras today.

Cirkut camera with film and accessories. Photographer: Henry Tabbers.

Cirkut Outfit

There were six distinct cameras in the Cirkut family to fit five different sizes of film. Four of the cameras were used exclusively for panoramas; two were built to be used with either panorama film or glass plate negatives. These last two versatile cameras were referred to as Cirkut Outfits. Continue reading →

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Posted in Digitization, Holdings, Public Programming

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Historypin update

Posted on March 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

We’ve written about our partnership with Historypin before, and the work of many of our volunteers to prepare images for pinning.

Masthead for our Historypin channel

Historypin has just rolled out customized channels. We’ve created a channel where you can find all our pinned content as well as a story feed. In the lower left corner you can find Historypin repeats, which are modern replicas of our images taken using the Historypin Smartphone App and overlaid on the older image. This one was contributed by jkeller – thanks!

We now have 523 images pinned to the Historypin map. We’d love to have you contribute stories about our images, or use them to create a Historypin Tour or Collection.

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