Saturday, August 23, 2014

Sepia Saturday 242 : Is This The Face That Launched A Thousand Skips?


For Sepia Saturday this week we are given faces and fans with a hint of hidden meaning. I have stripped things down to a minimum and concentrated on the face. And when you get rid of all the extra bits you realise what strange things faces - that concentration of sensory organs, that data input terminal of the human consciousness - are.

I am not sure who my featured face belongs to. It comes from my collection of family photographs and therefore it is someone within - or close to - the various family trees that inhabit this house. When I show the photograph to people who live in these trees, they all tend to claim it as their own - "it was a friend of my mothers"; "she worked with Uncle Harry"; "didn't she marry Dick Hudson?" - without being able to provide any reliable prevenance. I did an experimental Google Image Search and, reliable as ever, that suggested it was George Washington.

I searched through all my other family photos hoping to find a match which would help to pin her down to Edith or Harry or Dick, but to no avail. By the end of the day, the mysterious lady remained mysterious, and my room was a mess. Papers were everywhere, plastic storage boxes - that scourge and boon of the modern hoarder - were thrown all over the place. It is time for a Spring Clean (I work to an antipodean timetable ever since I bumped my head as a schoolboy). It is time to order another rubbish skip. Or maybe two.

Visit the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links to become fans of more faces.

20 comments:

  1. Don't throw the lady out with the bath water.

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  2. She's lovely whoever she is. Now wouldn't it be wonderful if someone who recognised/knew her, saw her, and solved the mystery.
    (I know what you mean about the plastic boxes).

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  3. She was a very lovely and elegant young lady. I bet someone carried her picture with him wherever he went.

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  4. I immediately thought "George Washington." I think Google bumped its head too.

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  5. Anonymous12:47 PM

    What a beautiful lady - hope her identity comes to light eventually

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  6. Anonymous1:51 PM

    Very profound thoughts about the face and sensory organs. It has given me food for thoughts. Lovely lady.

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  7. It looks like a still from a movie scene. I think she was the relative that went away and became a not famous actress.

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  8. It doesn't look the least bit like George Washington to me!

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  9. I think she's my great-aunt Signa's twin sister who was abducted as a child and raised by gypsies. I suppose that's as good a guess as Google's. Don't stop looking. Somebody will eventually figure it out.

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  10. Isn't it frustrating and sad to find a such a lovely photograph among family papers, and think she must have meant something to somebody for the photograph to have been kept - and it looks as if it is a stdio portrait and not just a casual snapshot. . Good luck with your spring cleaning!

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  11. Speaking of facial features - those eyes, so big & wide & focused straight ahead as if on nothing in particular. A little eerie. But she was quite lovely. Hope you can discover who she was one of these days!

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  12. I think her expression adds to her mystery. By looking up above the camera she seems to be on the witness stand, listening to the judge admonish her with a stern warning to answer the question.

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  13. Someone, on day, will know who she is. Maybe even Mr Google when he has more millions of images in the pool.

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  14. Your post made me smile. Thank you. George Washington?

    Yep totally relate to the storage boxes and bits and pieces everywhere!

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  15. Anonymous1:26 PM

    Have you uploaded her to Flickr ? I have great faith that someone within the next hundred years will identify my unidentified photos. Ever the optimist.

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  16. A Lovely Face.But I Wonder Who She Is Looking At? Not The Camera For Sure.Do
    You Ever Use Picasa?
    It manages to store all the faces in any image uploaded..I am always surprised how it 'sees' more faces that i can ever manage myself!

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  17. Anonymous12:58 PM

    She looks so thoughtful, tentative even as though she's not sure what lies ahead, or wondering if this is the right thing for her to be doing. Teaches us to label our photos doesn't it.

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  18. I am intrigued by her very artistic eyebrows.

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  19. Whatever her name, I'm sure it wasn't George.

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  20. Yes, part of faces are so odd. Which brings me to noses. Do you ever notice your nose in your way? No matter what you look at you suddenly realize your nose is there? The only way to not see your nose is to look up. Walk around looking up. This of course will cause you to bang your nose into things. The nose. We follow it every single day.

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