Thursday, January 19, 2012

Foote notes #3

In my previous posts on identifying Foote photos, I was blithering on about Foote's ledgers, so I thought I'd share a few images of them.

UMP director David Carr and I visited the Manitoba Archives back in November and donned surgical gloves in order to look at Foote's ledgers, diaries, clippings...and, of course, the filing cabinets full of his photographs.

(Winnipeg Free Press photographer Mike Deal accompanied us and took a few photographs of the ledgers, which he's let us use...)

Though we just leafed through the ledgers randomly, we were able to find the entry for one of the photos we've posted to this blog, of a nurse holding three swaddled babies.

The Archives attached the following description to the photo: "Major Mrs. Louise Payne with triplets, 1916." In their numbering system, it is officially described as "n2489."

Foote described it as "Triplet at Grace Hospital" and while it somewhat unclear in this particular entry, it seems to occupy the space between 5915 and 5916 in the ledger.

Finally, the photo itself has numbers inscribed on the image's top left. They seem to be backwards...and don't seem to correspond with the ledger number. (5-816?)

It was highly interesting to see Foote's filing system, such as it may be. (Can you imagine keeping track of fifty years' worth of photographs? I can't.)

Ariel Gordon
UMP Promotions/Editorial Assistant

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.