RPPC – The Posted Past

Navarro Now

Imagine all the reasons a man might vanish. Illness, catastrophe, bad deeds. Did our man Navarro step into the volcano itself? The less we know, the more his story unfolds.

A year ago, a photographer named only Navarro walked out of a lava field and into these pages. Then, he would not leave. In the three essays since, we’ve witnessed the birth of a volcano, watched a church and community swallowed whole, and wandered through an enigmatic and cinematic era of Mexico at mid-century.

In the early 1940s, Frida Kahlo was painting in the blue house in Coyoacán, building a self-image out of indigenous dress, pre-Columbian imagery, and a dramatic interiority of devotion and suffering. A few miles from there, tourists floated around the Xochimilco canals, waiting to have their photos taken aboard the flower boats.

In 1943, on those same canals, Emilio Fernández was filming María Candelaria starring Dolores Del Rio with the cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. The film would win the Palme d’Or that year and launch the golden age of Mexican cinema with a story that revered the nation’s indigenous origins.

André Breton had come and gone, calling Mexico the most surrealist country in the world. The Louvre bought a work by Kahlo, an unprecedented purchase for the artist and also for its political prowess. The exiled Trotsky was an honored guest, at Diego Rivera’s request. President Lázaro Cárdenas had nationalized the oil industries and redistributed land, putting the state in the middle of an global argument with communism on one side and capitalism on the other. Then Mexico and the United States became WWII allies, and the floes of attention and resources became even more complicated.

Despite the war, Paricutín’s spectacular smoke clouds commanded global coverage. Life sent photographers. Newsreels carried the footage everywhere. Pan American detoured its flights so passengers could see the new volcano from the air.

Navarro passed quietly through it all, camera in hand, one day taking pictures of modernist architecture rising in glass and concrete, and the next documenting the earth itself splitting open in a cornfield.

Navarro pointed his lens at the same indigenous Mexico in the same moment, with the same seriousness. Kahlo’s name and artwork is now symbolic of her culture and synonymous with her city. Navarro vanished entirely, except for one folder in someone else’s archive in Washington, DC.

I exited the Green Line at L’Enfant station, passed quickly through security screening, got a visitor’s badge, and was escorted to the third floor by everyone’s secret best friend, the staff archivist. My bag checked into a locker, and with only my phone, paper, and a pencil, I entered the glass-walled room. Two other researchers had their places set out. My cart of materials was waiting for me near a sunny window with a view onto the leafy street below.

The cart held five Smithsonian manuscript boxes from the William F. Foshag Papers. Careful preparation had led me to order several boxes before and after Box 9. Correspondence was alphabetical, so I asked for the N folders. I also wanted to look through a large sample of images from other photographers, including Bill Foshag and his Mexican collaborators, mostly fellow mineralogists.

To summarize, these guys were into rocks and attribution. Most of the letters contained precise language about the rock samples collected, observed, and lent out by the Smithsonian under Foshag’s direction. Also, who should get credit, and thus funding and the opportunity to travel for further study. Foshag was an administrator by title, but his personal photos and travels in the Southern Hemisphere tell the story of an adventurous life.

Regarding Paricutín, Ambassador George S. Messersmith wrote to the Secretary of State on March 10, 1943, with the story that would later become the official news report and the synopsis we know now. A Tarascan farmer plowing his field saw smoke coming from a furrow, then a wall of molten lava rose a hundred feet high. The Mexican government bought the land and charged spectators twenty-five centavos to fund a new highway, eventually issuing the commemorative stamp that is fortuitously fixed on the back on one of Navarro’s postcards. Quite a clue, and an indelible time marker.

In his memo, the ambassador notes that pictures, movies, and stills are being taken and will be transmitted in due course. Later, pages of Foshag correspondence lament the poor condition of the only moving images, a short film documentary was made of the volcanic eruption but had not survived the reproduction process at home.

In early March, the Office of Naval Intelligence sent an attaché to Uruapan, who drove the rough road out to the volcano and reported back in detail. A camp had sprung up at a distance from the cone, which had to be moved several times in the early weeks. Lava advanced sixteen meters per hour, he calculated. Then, this line that now sounds like an outright lie: no photographer was seen, either in the day or at night.

A Smithsonian paleontologist drove down with two colleagues in June. His field narrative is almost literary, describing lava of “the consistency of stiff molasses,” and “the birth agonies of a new flow.” In closing, he remarked that they had been one of the fortunate few to witness the travail and anguish of one night in Paricutín’s life. The sole, spare, irrefutable fact we know is that Navarro was there, too.

The United States Committee for the Study of Paricutin Volcano tracked every project and every dollar, in order to report in triplicate to their funders at the U.S. Geological Survey, the State Department, and the Geological Society of America. For example, Celedonio Gutiérrez, a local man, was paid sixty pesos a week, later raised to eighty-five, to maintain the camp and keep the record. How did Celedonio miss Navarro?

The committee’s annual reports name every paper published: Krauskopf on eruption mechanics, Barnes and Romberg on gravity determinations, the Foshag-González history of the first two years, and the photographic record being prepared for the National Archives. It is the very same meticulously catalogued photographic record I was thumbing through that day.

Next, I opened a leather-bound album of careful black-and-white prints entitled, Photographs of Paricutin Volcano taken during the first three years of its activity. Selected from the Collection of Ezequiel Ordóñez.

Ordóñez was the dean of Mexican geology. The album was assembled and presented through the official Mexican research-coordination commission. A named, curated, institutional photographic record of Mexican origin to match the Foshag record. The credited gaze of two nations, on two sides of a border, doing the same careful work of attribution.

Finally I opened Folder 7, still fairly crisp tan cardstock with a tab hand-lettered in pencil. Only a surname, a question mark, and the content label: Navarro, ? Photographs of Paricutín, 1943–1944.

Inside, a stack of black-and-white prints in clear archival sleeves. The top print was instantly recognizable as Navarro, though I hadn’t seen it before. A great dark eruption column rising over the cone, a small bare tree silhouetted in the foreground, and the tiny block letters NAVARRO FOT. just legible at the lower right. The stack included twenty photos altogether, only five overlapping with mine.

Navarro seems to have worked exclusively in Kodak Mexicana materials. All of his cards are stamped with the EKC indicia, which was standard professional postcard stock of the day. He was not a hobbyist with a box camera, but more likely a commercial photographer running a business. Most of the scientific images in other folders were printed on regular photo paper, probably by means of institutional production houses. Navarro was printing locally, the same inky contrasts of a real photo, but with the variable frames and exposures found onsite.

We know his territory was wider than the volcano by virtue of the Hotel Virrey de Mendoza in Morelia and the unidentified sanatorium presumed to be in Uruapan. Draw lines between Morelia, Uruapan, and the volcano and you get the tight triangle of a working photographer’s range, anchored east in the state capital and west in the lava.

The most critical contrast between Navarro’s images and the scientific record are the visual content of the images themselves. Bless them, the scientists pointed the camera at the ground, caught the low refractions of an entirely static rock, and labeled it. Navarro captured a nation’s indigenous and religious history being consumed back into the earth.

The Fototeca Nacional del INAH holds regional negatives and studio collections that have never been digitized. The municipal archives in Morelia might have kept studio registrations and business permits from the 1940s. There are other archives to visit like Biblioteca Michoacana, and a few private collections now held at university libraries like Princeton. Occasionally, there are still Navarro cards for sale on eBay. Kodak has extensive business archives that could shed light on the places and people involved in the burgeoning photo film industry far south of Rochester, NY.

The glass-walled sanatorium may belong to the wave of modernist health architecture built under Mexico’s 1942 National Hospital Plan, all the transparency, light, and air needed for the treatment of tuberculosis. Tracing his actual footsteps to that building might place Navarro on a specific hillside or with a known client. Or, it might lead to a pile of rubble.

Some answers are not in any archive. Perhaps they are with a family in Morelia who remember a grandfather with a camera and a tall tale of a fire-breathing dragon emerging from the earth. His picture-proofs held an the old leather bound album that gets passed around at a kitchen table alongside stories that were never written down.

In one of the boxes, I found a small black-and-white photograph of a Purépecha family, four women and three men, seated and standing on a wooden porch in San Juan Parangaricutiro. Pressed above the photograph on an onionskin slip was a handwritten caption from Jenaro González.

A typical Tarascan family, photographed at their home. Aurora Cuaro, lower left. One of the few people in history who have attended the birth of a volcano. A very intelligent woman, one of our best and most reliable sources of information.

A second photograph in the folder showed Aurora alone, standing in front of a wooden building in a white blouse and a long embroidered skirt, smiling straight at the camera. My photo of the photo is terrible, but you can still see her. Clear-eyed. At ease.

Aurora Cuaro lived inside the eruption. It happened in her cornfield, her parish, her sky. Foshag and González knew this and credited her, in writing, by name.

What the archive does not hold is what she knew. The Purépecha had lived in this volcanic landscape for centuries, and they had ways of reading the ground that did not begin in February 1943 and did not end when Paricutín went dormant in 1952. Aurora and her neighbors brought a lived intelligence of their own to the encounter with the era. This is the deeper kind of absence. Undoubtedly, the Cuaro family knew Navarro.

We will probably never know his first name or see his face. I once thought I had a photograph of him, and it turned out to be a man with surveying equipment, not a camera. Was he born in Michoacán or came from somewhere else? Was he twenty-five or fifty in 1943? What did he know of Frida Kahlo, and what did he think about war? After all this time, where is Navarro now?

Dionicio Pulido, the farmer whose cornfield erupted, and whose face will never be forgotten.

With special thanks to the staff of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Frida Kahlo Museum

Michoacán: From Kingdom to Colony to Sovereign State (1324–2015) — Indigenous Mexico

Navarro in the Lava Field — The Posted Past

Navarro News — The Posted Past

Navarro Tomorrow — The Posted Past

Paricutín | Volcano, Mexico, & Eruption | Britannica

Paricutín: The Birth of a Volcano | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Navarro Tomorrow

In 1943, director Emilio Fernández was filming a scene much like this one on the flower canals of Xochimilco in Mexico City. His film, María Candelaria, would win the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year and launch the golden age of Mexican cinema, introducing a spare and stylized visual landscape that rested in reverence for the country’s Purépecha past.

This flower boat image is another to emerge from an album of old black and white photographs from mid-century in the Michoacán region of Mexico. The photos may or may not belong to the same set. Only a few spare clues suggest any connection at all.

Tomorrow, I head down to the National Archives Reading Room at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, DC, to finally open Folder 7 in Box 9, the trove of Navarro materials that I hope may reveal more about our enigmatic photographer.

I’ve order an additional five boxes of materials from the Foshag archives, correspondence and comparative images that may give us more context for the post-war decade that brought intense global attention to an otherwise quiet region of the world.

Political foment, modern artistic aspirations, scientific discovery, and the earth itself churning below. Let’s follow where Navarro goes next.

Healing Ward

British WWI Hospital Ward RPPCs, a rare paired set, circa 1915–1918

These two real photo postcards document a British auxiliary hospital ward decorated for Christmas, sometime between 1915 and 1918. They are unused and in remarkably good condition. Together they form a matched pair, shot on the same day from opposite ends of the same large convalescence hall.

The architecture, nursing uniforms, iron bed frames, style of celebration, and the back of the cards all point to the same conclusion: a British ward during wartime Christmas, shot by a local photographer working with the same technical materials and conditions as those documented in well-respected the Wellcome Collection in London.

Front of Postcards

The room is large with high ceilings and tall windows running along both sides. Hardwood floors extend the full length of the ward. Iron-framed hospital beds line each wall in neat rows, their white linens crisp and turned. A series of small tables anchor the center aisle, dressed with lace edges and set with tiered decorations, small ornamental figures, and floral arrangements. Crepe paper garlands radiate among the hanging fixtures from the center toward the walls. Nurses in white dresses, bibbed aprons, and distinctive white caps stand at intervals among the beds. Male patients rest in several of the beds or sit up for the photograph.

The first card was shot from one end of the room, looking toward a grand arched window fitted with ornate leaded stained glass and flanking panels in a geometric floral pattern. The second shot looks back the other direction toward an interior archway.

The photographic quality of both cards is high. The tonal range is continuous, with a fine grain and deeply resolved shadows. The nurses in the first image are grouped more loosely near the central table, and a ghostly motion blur in their figures suggests a longer exposure time. The second image is darker and the poses are more formal.

Back of Postcards

The cards share the same markings on the reverse, confirming they came from the same stock and photographer. The back carries the words “Post Card” in a decorative serif typeface, and a clean t-shaped dividing line delineating spaces “For Correspondence” and “Address Only.” No stamp box, printer’s imprint, paper manufacturer mark, or country or origin. That makes this RPPC irrefutably British.

Britain pioneered the divided postcard back in 1902, five years before the United States adopted the format. American RPPCs of the same era almost universally carried manufacturer’s marks such as AZO or VELOX in a printed stamp box, used to identify the photographic paper brand. British cards of this period carried no such mark. The back of these cards places their manufacture firmly in the British tradition.

The absence of any commercial marker further suggests a staff or commercial photographer and local production. These were not mass-produced. They were made in small numbers, likely for official wartime documentation or as personal mementos of a meaningful Christmas.

Two complementary long shots on a memorable day. Paired RPPCs are less common. A matched set intact, from a wartime context more than a century later, is rarer still.

Wartime Convalescence

Britain entered the First World War in August 1914 with 297 trained military nurses. Nowhere near enough for what was coming. Within weeks, the Royal Army Medical Corps and the British Red Cross Society jointly activated the Voluntary Aid Detachment system, mobilizing thousands of civilian volunteers to staff a network of auxiliary hospitals across the country. By 1918, approximately 80,000 VAD members served in uniform. Twelve thousand worked directly in military hospitals. Sixty thousand staffed auxiliary hospitals of various kinds.

The buildings pressed into service ranged from country houses and public schools to civic halls and converted warehouses. The ward in these cards show Gothic Revival arched windows with Arts and Crafts stained glass. The architecture is distinguished with high ceilings and dark wood wainscoting. Perhaps this is a purpose-built civic or private building of Edwardian ambition, converted for wartime use.

The iron bed frames visible in these cards match the tubular iron hospital beds documented in the ward photographs of King George Hospital, the largest military hospital in Britain during the war. Converted from a newly built HM Stationery Office warehouse on Stamford Street, London, the hospital opened in May 1915 and treated some 71,000 men before closing in June 1919. The Wellcome Collection holds its ward photographs. They show the same head and foot rail design, the same lightweight iron construction, the same configuration of beds along the ward walls. This was standard British military hospital specification, and these cards meet it exactly.

Wartime Wardrobe

We can more precisely date these cards by the white caps worn by the nurses. By early 1915, untrained VAD nursing staff had begun adopting the triangular floating veil worn by trained military nurses. Professional nurses were already unhappy about working alongside civilian volunteers. By November 1915, the Joint War Committee introduced a standardized cap for VAD nurses, making distinctions of training and rank visible at a glance.

The caps in these cards match that post-1915 VAD style. They are not the earlier flat cap prior to 1915, nor the fully structured veil of the trained QAIMNS sister. The confidence of the nurses’ poses and the scale of the ward celebration suggest an established wartime routine rather than the improvised urgency of the war’s first Christmas. This may narrow the date to 1916, 1917, or 1918.

Wellcome’s Wartime Collection

The Wellcome Collection’s photographic holdings of The King George Hospital archives open a window onto wartime convalescence. From the start, its philosophy held that recovery from war’s trauma demanded more than medicine.

Each bed had an electric light and a pink and white quilt. Common rooms on each floor were set up for socializing, smoking, reading, and writing letters. A miniature Harrods-like gift shop kept the wards stocked with comforts to necessities. It ordered up to 60,000 cigarettes each week so every patient could have six or seven smokes a day.

Most remarkably, a Royal Academician designed a rooftop garden that eventually held 24 revolving shelters positioned so patients could take in the air and watch the River Thames in all weathers. Queen Alexandra visited in May 1915, and that September she sent the hospital a tripod telescope so patients could study the rooftop view across London. On Christmas Day 1916, King George V and Queen Mary toured every ward in person, and presented each patient with a copy of the Queen’s Gift Book.

The decorated ward in these postcards belongs to that same time period, patriotic conviction, and palliative approach. The lace tablecloth, tiered cake stands, crepe paper garlands, and nurses standing at attention in their best uniforms were elements of organized care for men who had survived the Western Front, deserved a memorable Christmas, and needed more than the doctor’s orders.

History of King George Hospital at Lost Hospitals of London

Scarlet Finders research on VAD uniform dating guide

The British Red Cross and auxiliary hospitals during the First World War

Historic Hospitals on the broader history of auxiliary hospital use

Detailed guide to British military nursing services during the Great War

The Past, in Particular

Over the past few weeks, a rare photo postcard album has revealed places, property, and people, along with our own ideas about what we see. We’ve gone from unmarked wilderness, to building structures and social life, to faces and a few names.

We look back at them, and they return the gaze. Their stories blend with our own memories and imagination. They begin to feel like someone’s ancestors, though the particulars remain elusive.

Rochester in Rearview

In 1877, photography required glass plates, wet chemicals, heavy equipment, and specialized knowledge. George Eastman, a frustrated bank clerk from a poor family in Rochester, taught himself the process in his mother’s kitchen.

A decade later, Eastman had invented a simple camera pre-loaded with film for 100 exposures. By 1903, the Eastman Kodak Company released the 3A Folding Pocket Camera with 3¼ × 5½ inch film—exactly postcard size and pre-printed on the reverse. Local photographers and home enthusiasts could contact-print the negative directly onto postcard paper. No enlarger needed, and simplified processing equipment and chemicals.

Rochester became an ecosystem. Bausch & Lomb made the lenses. Kodak manufactured the cameras, bought the film company, and controlled the processing. Customers shipped the entire camera unit back to the factory, and received prints and a pre-loaded camera in return. “You press the button, we do the rest.” Factory workers were the first to witness an era of American life, as images of farms, houses, banks, theatre, and towns and their inhabitants poured in.

A quiet man, Eastman watched this unfold from the center, as his invention changed history and rippled through culture. By 1920, millions of Americans owned cameras. Eastman left a simple note when he ended his own life at 77 and in degenerative pain, “To my friends: My work is done. Why wait? GE”.

What We See

The studio portraits above show painted backdrops—ornamental arches, garden trellises. The lighting is controlled. Poses held steady. Technical quality consistent. These were made by professionals charging by the sitting.

The outdoor snapshots show real places—porches, orchards, dirt roads. Natural lighting, sometimes harsh. Composition varies from confident to awkward. These came from camera owners of varying skill. The irregularities in frame and exposure suggest they were developed at home, too.

What We Don’t See

Despite the pre-printed paper and earnest intent, real photo postcards were rarely sent as such. A few have difficult script, cryptic addresses, faded cancellations, and worn stamps.

“Hello Fanni. Miss Fanni Moore, Panhuska, Okla.”

The remaining relics haven’t been labeled, addressed, or mailed. Most backs are blank, and they were often collected in photo albums. The manufacturing marks may have been quite incidental.

What’s missing from nearly all: names. Very few clues to subjects, locations, dates. The people who made these photographs knew who everyone was. They didn’t need labels. Or, perhaps they were accompanied by letters and mailed in envelopes for privacy and protection.

A century later, the faces remain potent but anonymous. We guess at relationships from physical similarity, from who stands near whom. Sometimes we’re right. Sometimes, we can’t believe our eyes.

Spaces in Between

The 3A Folding Pocket Kodak cost $20-30, equivalent to $600-900 today. An expensive hobby, but accessible to prosperous farmers, small business owners, middle-class families. Film cost about 50 cents per roll.

The investment meant something, whether it was the equipment or the studio session. People photographed what mattered—children, homes, gatherings. The images document their priorities, and their time passing.

Real People, Real Limits

These are real people who lived, worked, loved, died. Someone cared enough to preserve their images. They matter still, in part, because they mattered to someone before.

But our analysis stops here. We can describe what we see—the composition, the technical choices, the historical context. We can note patterns across the collection. We can explain how the technology worked and who had access.

The work of naming and placing, in particular, belongs to families searching their own histories, connecting faces to stories passed down, matching photographs to genealogical records. Those searches have their own purposes, their own meanings.

We are collectors examining patterns, not descendants reclaiming ancestors. Though, it is tempting.

People Past

Last week, buildings emerged and oil derricks erupted. Evidence accumulated, context implied. An unknown town takes shape and we surmise. Now, people stare across a century and time flies.

Seven adults carefully arranged on a rocky outcrop. Three men, four women. Two children in white dresses seated in front. Twins? Cousins? Someone operated the camera.

We see the composition and relational questions arise. Are they family? Kin? Friends on an outing? Do the poses suggest occasion, or documentation?

Evidence ends and story begins. We fill in by reading subtle cues in how they stand, who touches whom, which faces seem to fit together. Clues come quietly and mistakes, too. Always, we’re revealing ourselves.

Here we see one girl, three moments, and years passing. The baby stares out with solemn intensity. Then she’s older, on a throne in white dress, commanding the frame. Finally she’s the eldest of four, and her protective gaze tells all.

The postcards show her time moving, roles shifting. She grows and gains presence. She becomes a big sister, then a bigger sister still.

The postcards show the sequence and the story intrudes. We can safely assume the scenario, the kinship, the birth order. But then we imagine her. She and her siblings stand as evidence. We provide the narrative.

Now nine men, perched around a large rock on uneven ground in a forest, maybe a park. Hats, a variety of ties, white shirts in sunlight. Ages range. Some engage the camera. Others look away.

Compare this to the first photograph. Similar outdoor setting and careful arrangement. Same paper stock, same photographic quality. Do any faces repeat? That man in the center looking off to the distance—could he be the man on the back left of the family group?

We squint. The shape of a jaw, the set of shoulders, the tilt of a head. Errors lead us toward other observations. Misreads become clues. We’re searching, and trying out plausible connections.

A different girl and a similar progression (maybe). The baby carriage can be dated within a range, 1915-1925. Fashions shift slowly in some places, rapidly in others, but period details do show. Those bows!

However, uncertainties hover. Is this the eldest girl growing up? Or, are we forcing connection where none exists? The bobbed hairstyles might give it away. Or they might mislead entirely.

A particular stare, a nose ridge, an anomaly at the jawline, and we are on the pursuit again. The faces echo. Three generations, or two. We assign roles: son, mother, daughter. Sisters?

The oval portrait shows four women arranged in a formal cluster. Elaborate hairstyles, high collars, cameo brooch visible on the seated figure. More prosperous, perhaps. Different family entirely, or different branch? Is she at the center the same as the older woman below? We cannot know.

In between the guesses, a different story emerges entirely. Our own families, and that we belonged. Or, that we confidently walked on. In either case, we are humming with history.

We’re deep in assumption now. Building genealogies from facial features, paper stock, and similar poses. The archives encourage it. These cards traveled together. Someone kept them together. The connections existed, however disassembled.

Another baby carriage, different from the first. And on the back of the card, handwriting: this is Irene with Willie’s baby, sent to Aunt Fannie. We know Irene from when she was four, seated with Uncle Rufus Dale, 84.

What satisfaction, when a storyline clings together. Names accumulate. Groups delineate. Relationships clarify. The archive speaks back, and the story begins to imitate fact.

The search becomes research. The archive rewards our attention and budding accuracy. But, who doesn’t love Aunt Fannie? Even if we’ve never seen her.

Now, here is Irene amid two new figures who appear to have a strong bond. Sisters? Friends?

As we might expect, there is more to reveal. Next week, we’ll look at pairings in quite a variety, and even more merry misleads. Then portraits, and finally, a grave.

Property Past

Tricky, sticky stories arise at the sight of buildings in the landscape. Evidence (or absence) of us along the way.

As landscapes, last week’s real photo postcards (RPPC) asked for nothing. Trees, frozen roads, animals burrowing in snow—they floated free of context. We could easily appreciate them without knowing where they might be.

Buildings are different. A structure says someone decided, planned, risked, and accomplished. They hauled materials, drove nails, painted trim. Buildings demand explanation in ways that hills might easily demure.

Reading postcards slowly reveals patterns. The undivided back means pre-1907. The real photo process suggests a local photographer, or maybe an itinerant professional documenting a place too remote to the reach of commercial postcard companies. Paper stock, indicia, stamps and cancellation, faded handwriting and previous labeling, even image placement and crop—these technical details narrow the place possibilities.

But they don’t yet answer another question: Who are Robert and Paul?

Tell Robert the dog lying down is mine and the one standing up is Paul dog

What We Might Know

A two-story house with a generous porch is carefully centered in one photograph. Mature trees in the foreground. Curtains hang in the windows. Someone lived here and wanted to show their pride. Or, was it for sale?

The architectural details offer more clues. Clapboard siding, stone or brick foundation, decorative porch elements—not fancy, but intentional. It seems to be in a neighborhood with sidewalks. In an era between 1900-1920, somewhere in the Midwest or West judging by lot size. Also, a fire hydrant.

The windmill in another image dates itself. Windmills were an important utility and industry, and that style had a particular era. The house beneath it—elaborate Queen Anne with corner turret, ornamental shingles, and ornate columns—speaks to aspiration. Someone had big plans. This is visible evidence. When and where becomes roughly recognizable.

But, the people who stood on that porch remain absent and enigmatic. Who were they? What is happening here? A creative tension is mounting between the realm of evidence and the pull of story.

Sensing Stories

Two women stand in front of McMann Boarding House wearing identical striped dresses. The building is simple—board and batten, minimal trim, the kind of structure that goes up first and fast in a growing place.

The photograph has a vertical tear, the exposure is bad, and time has degraded it. But the sign remains legible: McMann Boarding House. Finally, a name.

Who was McMann? Who are these women? Employees? Vacationers? The photo is both casual and deliberately staged. What might the matching dresses mean? Pride? Subjugation?

Reading their faces, we fill in the narrative, almost immediately and sometimes inescapably. Relationships, motivations, futures take shape unbidden. This is exactly what we both invited and warned of last week—making it up. Always dangerous, sometimes worthwhile.

The impulse to story is nearly irresistible. A name on a building. Two women in matching dresses. The space around the postcard lights up. Are these their stories, or our own, or a magical projection that folds time?

When the Past Chats Back

Shuffling the stack, several cards in this collection start speaking to one another. Same photographic quality. Same paper stock. Similar landscape—flat, spare, newly broken. And most telling: similar structures in states of becoming.

Laid out together, the pattern emerges. Houses with stone foundations and wraparound porches. An elaborate Queen Anne with a windmill. McMann Boarding House with its two women in matching stripes. A lunch room with an immaculately vernacular grand porch. Best-dressed proprietors standing proud. A girl and her horse, bare buildings behind her. A picnic under the canopy of a large tree.

Also, a massive plume of black smoke billowing skyward, an oil derrick to the left, eight or nine men grinning toward the camera. The photograph stops everything cold. They struck liquid gold. A triumph worth documenting. Fine lines of the plumes etching through the darkest black.

These eleven images are a cluster from the same story—a town emerging around oil. Homesteaders and entrepreneurs arriving in a place that may have been open prairie five years earlier. Building homes, businesses, infrastructure for both industrial productivity and social life. Documenting the process with real photo postcards, for themselves or to send East. Their message: we have arrived safely and are in luck.

From Here to Now

This is a founding, the moment a place began and the stakes changed. These aren’t isolated buildings anymore and oddly they seem less like photos, too. We know there is a community taking shape and the evidentiary questions multiply. Who were they, by name? What brought them here? Did this place survive or vanish?

And harder, deeper, more consequential questions: Who lived here before? What animals and habitats were displaced? What did the derricks do? For them, and also to us.

Boom town logic. Extraction economy. Infrastructure dependencies and family injuries inherited. Cultural degradation, and environmental costs still being paid. This isn’t quaint history. This is the beginning of something we’re grappling with today.

Suddenly our imaginative stories contract and we now seek facts. The boarding house proprietor’s daily life can be imagined, but not separated from a place built on oil speculation. The architectural ambition of that Queen Anne deserves appreciation, but it went up in a town that might have lasted ten years or a hundred, depending on the wells. The buildings aren’t innocent, and we are implicated.

More in Store

Another stack of postcards might be related to this cluster—similar age, similar style, possibly the same region, likely at later dates. And then a few unrelated ones, probably European based on the architecture.

Not every fragment connects or resolves. Some buildings will remain singular, their stories unrecoverable. Churches and homes, beautiful structures, carefully photographed. Loved locally today as a memory or a ruin, perhaps.

Not everything needs a narrative. Some images can just be enigmatic. Evidence of care, of craftsmanship, of a moment someone thought worth preserving. These evocative details lead to fiction, which makes its own case for history and the preservation of minute detail.

But this cluster won’t let go. They connect to another stack, and soon we’ll know more. Next week we’ll meet the people themselves, looking back at us.

Wise Eyes

Old Rufus Dale had seen a thing or two, and Irene had her suspicions.

An early 20th century real photo postcard (RPPC) showing a poignant intergenerational portrait.

Front of the card: The photograph captures an elderly man with a distinctive long white beard, dressed in a dark suit, seated on a dilapidated wooden loveseat or couch in front of a clapboard house. Beside him sits a young child in a white dress, perched on the arm of the furniture. Behind them a decorative lace curtain hangs outside the open window. The setting appears to be rural America.

Back details: The reverse shows the handwritten inscription in pencil, Uncle Rufus Dale, age 84 and Irene age 4. We can assume a family relationship, likely between grand-uncle and grand-niece.

Condition and Appeal: The real photo postcard is in excellent condition front and back, unposted with helpful writing, and an AZO indicia dating the item between 1904 and 1918. The subject matter and production method suggest this is a unique image and object, with no known duplicate.

RPPCs are quite collectible, especially those with interesting and clear photographic subjects. The rural American family setting, the age gap between subjects, and the excellent condition make this item more desirable, appealing to collectors of early photography, genealogy researchers, postcard collectors, and those interested in American family and social history from the early 1900s.

[Note: Summer focus is on detailed captions. Essays return in September!]

Navarro in the Lava Field

In February 1943, a photographer enigmatically known only as ‘Navarro’ documented Parícutin’s volcanic destruction of a Michoacán village and church, creating powerful postcards that circulated worldwide at the time and are highly collectible now. Then, Navarro vanished from history.

Parícutin erupted from Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield on February 20, 1943, becoming the first comprehensively documented volcanic birth in human history.

The response was immediate and international. Despite World War II, the Parícutin volcanic plumes commanded global coverage. The geological disruptions of fire and lava inspired scientific awe. Life Magazine dispatched photographers. Newsreels carried footage worldwide. Airlines altered flight paths for passenger viewing. By 1947, Hollywood used the still-active volcano as backdrop for the movie Captain from Castile, employing thousands of locals as extras.

In the extensive archives documenting Parícutin volcano’s nine-year life cycle, one name appears and vanishes: Navarro. His postcard images capture the most significant moment in the volcano’s terrifying story—when lava reached the 400-year-old church of San Juan Parangaricutiro. Despite meticulous record-keeping around this geological event, Navarro himself remains a mystery.

His photographs have more than survived. When story of the events at Parícutin are retold, one always finds a Navarro image. The photographer does appear in one other place: Folder 7 in Box 9 of the William F. Foshag archives.

The Day Lava Reached the Church

Navarro’s postcards document a sequence unfolding over a few crucial days in early 1943. For the year prior, the Purépecha community of San Juan Parangaricutiro had watched lava flows advance on their small village while praying their homes, farms, and colonial church would be spared.

Despite their pleas and processions, the lava flow had accelerated beyond divine intervention. President Lázaro Cárdenas and local priests convinced most residents to evacuate, carrying sacred objects and any moveable materials to the nearby town of Uruapan. One rare slice of film shows men removing clay tiles from a building roof.

When the lava reached the church, Navarro was there to document the destruction. Black lava creeping around the church’s perimeter. Intense heat causing wooden elements to combust. Steady accumulation of cooled volcanic rock against the baroque stone façade, contrasting human craftsmanship with geological force.

Two striking images captures the church’s wooden elements on fire—ornate arched stonework and columns holding the structure up while everything else is consumed. Extending the mystery further, these two images bear exactly the same mark and style of the others, but a different name is entirely obscured. Perhaps it makes sense, Navarro and another photographer would go together. Better than alone.

Foshag and the Official Record

William Frederick Foshag of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum led Parícutin’s scientific research and systematic documentation. A respected mineralogist and curator, Foshag had already spent his career studying volcanic minerals and processes. When Parícutin erupted, he was uniquely positioned to lead the most comprehensive study of a volcano’s complete life cycle.

Foshag arrived within weeks of the initial eruption and remained involved until the volcano’s dormancy in 1952. Working with Mexican geologist Dr. Jenaro González Reyna, he established a research station documenting every phase of development. Their collaboration produced detailed maps, temperature measurements, chemical analyses, and thousands of photographs fundamental to volcanic research today.

Navarro’s church sequence suggests either remarkable intuition, access to local knowledge, or information coming from scientific observers. The Purépecha community, drawing on generations of volcanic experience, provided crucial insights about timing and the landscape. Navarro’s ability to be there for the church’s final moments indicates he was plugged in.

Foshag’s archives reveal an extensive network of colleagues contributing to this documentation. Box 9, Folder 7 bears Navarro’s name alongside numerous other photographers, artists, and local and international contacts. It seems Foshag recognized the value of different perspectives in creating a complete record.

The official scientific documentation benefited from all the independent photography produced at the time. Their paths very likely crossed with many others at work during critical days when the lava and ash threatened San Juan Parangaricutiro.

Kodak in Mexico

The real photo postcard industry supporting photographers like Navarro was sophisticated. Entrepreneurs traveled with complete darkroom setups in automobiles, developing film and producing finished postcards within hours. They sold to tourists, sent copies to newspapers, and maintained distribution networks across Mexico and the United States.

By 1943, Kodak had established a robust business providing both cameras and materials throughout Mexico. Navarro’s postcards bear the EKC (Eastman Kodak Company) indicia and are marked Kodak Mexicana, LTD. Navarro had access to standardized, high-quality photographic paper specifically designed for postcard production. This infrastructure allowed photographers to work with consistent materials as they traveled to remote locations.

This commercial system created a parallel archive to official scientific record, prioritizing dramatic visual impact and human interest. While Foshag documented systematic geological processes, Navarro captured moments resonating with public imagination: the church under siege, displaced communities, civilization meeting unstoppable natural forces.

The quality and consistency in images suggests professional training and equipment. His compositions demonstrate understanding of the landscape and evoke pathos. Combined with his access to Kodak’s professional-grade materials, we may assume Navarro was more than a concerned observer.

History’s Mysteries

Navarro’s fade from historical records reflects broader patterns in how scientific events get remembered. Official histories preserve institutional participants while quietly forgetting the names and stories of independent contributors. This is notable with Parícutin, where local Purépecha knowledge proved crucial to understanding volcanic behavior, yet indigenous voices were largely excluded from formal documentation.

Still, Navarro gives us another chance to go there ourselves for a glimpse of those extraordinary hours. His postcards circulated broadly through the popular means of the era—family correspondence, tourist collections, commercial distributors—and are highly collectible today.

As researchers study Foshag’s extensive archives, Navarro’s name remains a tantalizing fragment—present enough to suggest significance, absent enough to resist interpretation. His postcards survive in collections across North America, carrying their maker’s vision but not his story.

This persistence of mystery tells us something about how we remember extraordinary events. While institutions preserve official records with careful attribution, the broader network of individual contributors often dissolves into anonymity. Navarro represents countless others who showed up when history was being made, pointed cameras at crucial moments, contributed to our understanding of the world, and then vanished back into the crowd.

The photographs of the church’s destruction remain powerful because they capture something beyond ecological process—the moment when human scale met geological time and a community’s sacred center became a monument to forces beyond human control. Navarro was there to see it, and that’s a chance for us to remember the event and to admire him.

This essay was inspired by Elena, Maria, and Sandy – with gratitude.

To Read More

Paricutín | Volcano, Mexico, & Eruption | Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/place/Paricutin

Paricutin – Lake Patzcuaro website
http://www.lakepatzcuaro.org/Paricutin-Volcano.html

How Volcanoes Work – the eruption of Paricutin, Mexico
https://volcanoes.sdsu.edu/Paricutin.html

The eruption of Parícutin volcano on a farmer’s cornfield, 1943 – Rare Historical Photos
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/paricutin-volcano-eruption-photographs/

Paricutín, the volcano that fascinated the world, still captures imaginations
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/mexico-living/paricutin-still-captures-imaginations/

Parícutin: The Birth of a Volcano | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/earth-science/paricutin-birth-volcano

What It Was Like To See A Volcano Being Born – Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-it-was-like-to-see-a-volcano-being-born

Garcia, Rafael, Photographs of Paricutin Volcano, 1943-1944 | Smithsonian Institution Archives
https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/fbr_item_modsi666

Michoacán: From kingdom to Colony to Sovereign State (1324-2015) — Indigenous Mexico
https://www.indigenousmexico.org/articles/michoacan-from-kingdom-to-colony-to-sovereign-state-1324-2015

A Buffalo Soldier Mystery

A lone Buffalo Soldier on horseback captures a moment of dignity in African American military history.

Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs) offer tangible connections to history, yet they often emerge from a family photo album or shoebox collection entirely without context. Piecing together their stories requires careful observation and historical research, picking up valuable clues along the way.

Today’s case is an image of a lone Buffalo Soldier on horseback, printed sometime between 1904 and 1918. This postcard captures a moment of dignity in African American military history. The soldier sits tall in the saddle, wearing a formal military dress cap (rather than the campaign hat often associated with frontier service) and a meticulously maintained uniform. The setting—featuring a substantial brick building and cement sidewalk—suggests an established military installation rather than a frontier outpost.

The man is likely from the 9th or 10th Cavalry, and two military posts stand out: Fort Robinson in Nebraska and Fort Myer in Virginia, both important locations in Buffalo Soldier history.

Western Bastion

From 1887 to 1898, Fort Robinson served as Regimental Headquarters for Buffalo Soldier cavalry and infantry units. The 9th Cavalry Regiment made its headquarters there beginning in 1887, serving with distinction and boasting ten Medal of Honor winners from the Indian Wars. The Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Robinson earned a reputation for discipline and effectiveness that would later influence their assignments to more prestigious postings.

The 10th Cavalry Regiment maintained a significant presence at Fort Robinson during the early 1900s. The substantial brick buildings and newly constructed cement sidewalks visible in the photograph align with Fort Robinson’s infrastructure during this period, as the fort underwent significant modernization around this time. The formal dress uniform and cap in the photograph suggest this might have been a commissioned officer or a non-commissioned officer in a ceremonial or garrison role at the fort.

Nation’s Capital

Troop K of the 9th Cavalry served at Fort Myer in Virginia from May 25, 1891, to October 3, 1894, under the command of Major Guy Henry, a Medal of Honor recipient. This prestigious assignment bears a direct link to Fort Robinson. The selection of Troop K for this assignment was a recognition of the outstanding performance at Fort Robinson and other western posts.

The post at Fort Myer was the first time after the Civil War that an African American unit was stationed east of the Mississippi River near a major metropolitan area. The dignified formal pose and military dress cap would be consistent with a soldier stationed at this prestigious posting adjacent to Arlington Cemetery and Washington D.C., where ceremonial duties would have been part of their responsibilities. Both geographic and symbolic, the lauded post demonstrates how the Buffalo Soldiers earned respect through excellence despite pervasive racial prejudice.

While the AZO markings suggest a 1904-1918 printing date for this postcard, it’s possible the photograph itself was taken earlier. Many soldiers had formal portrait photographs taken to commemorate their service, which were later reproduced as postcards. If this soldier served at Fort Myer with Troop K (1891-1894), the image could have been reproduced on AZO stock years later. Alternatively, if the image dates to the 1904-1907 period, it likely shows a 10th Cavalry soldier at Fort Robinson. Without identifying marks or annotations, we can only speculate.

In either case, the photograph reveals a poignant moment during a complex era of American history. The soldier’s strong gaze suggest a person aware of his place in this important legacy. The Buffalo Soldiers’ contributions to American military history invite deeper study, recognition, and remembrance.

To Explore More

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum – https://buffalosoldiersmuseum.org/the-buffalo-soldiers/

The Proud Legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers – National Museum of African American History and Culture – https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/proud-legacy-buffalo-soldiers

National Archives: Exploring the Life and History of the “Buffalo Soldiers” – https://www.archives.gov/publications/record/1998/03/buffalo-soldiers.html

Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Myer Historical Marker – https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=41108

Washington DC Chapter, 9th & 10th (Horse) Cavalry Association – http://www.buffalosoldiers-washington.com/Fort%20Myer.html

Coblenz Continued

When I connected with European researchers writing a book on the married Swedish/German photographers, Lindstedt and Zimmermann, we discovered that last week’s trove of real photo postcards is quite rare. Even better, we found more.

New Discoveries from a Lost Archive

Last week’s essay examined the American occupation of Coblenz, a unique period of military history, through the photographic lens of Lindstedt & Zimmermann. The Lindstedt & Zimmermann studio was destroyed during Allied bombing in World War II, decimating their archive and rendering the surviving examples of their work as uncommon historical artifacts.

The exchange with the research team prompted another search through our postcard collection resulting in the discovery of 25 additional images. Most can be attributed to Lindstedt & Zimmermann based on stylistic elements, materials and subject matter. Some bear the mark of other photographers including Paul Stein, another Coblenz studio. Ten photographs document the catastrophic flood of the Rhine in January 1920 – images that likely haven’t been seen in a century.

The Great Flood of January 1920

The January 1920 flood represented one of the most significant natural disasters to impact the American occupation forces during their tenure in Germany. The handwritten note on one postcard reveals both the severity of the flood and its impact on the American presence. This mixed German-English description captures the cross-cultural nature of the occupation.

“Der Rhein hat über its banks geflowed und Uncle Sam’s autos gdamaged. The river is the highest in over a hundred years, almost beyond my memory!”

The photographs show numerous small boats navigating the water and automobiles partially submerged in floodwaters, with bridges and buildings visible in the background. These images provide rare documentation of a significant environmental event that temporarily disrupted occupation activities and required adaptation by both American forces and local residents.

Harlem Hellfighters

This very rare view shows what appears to be members of an African American regimental band with their instruments at Romagne, France. Black men served in segregated units during World War I, with regiments such as the 369th Infantry (the “Harlem Hellfighters”) earning recognition for their service. Their regimental bands played an important cultural role, introducing European audiences to American jazz and ragtime music. These musical ambassadors created cultural connections that transcended the military context of their presence. The inclusion of this photograph adds an important dimension to our understanding of the American military presence in post-war Europe, highlighting the contributions of African American servicemen whose stories have been marginalized in historical accounts.

YMCA Women

The expanded collection also includes two formal portraits of women in YMCA uniform, complete with the organization’s distinctive triangular insignia on hat and lapel. Sometimes called Y girls, female YMCA workers provided essential services for American soldiers stationed far from home. They operated canteens, organized recreational activities, offered educational programs, and provided a connection to American civilian life that helped maintain morale during the occupation period.

The YMCA was among the few organizations that deployed American women to work directly with troops overseas during this era. These women volunteers typically came from educated, middle or upper-class backgrounds and represented an early example of American women engaging in international service work. Their presence added a civilian dimension to the occupation and helped create environments where American soldiers could productively spend their off-duty hours.

Military Pageantry and Daily Operations

One striking photograph shows the 76th Field Artillery Regiment arranged in a “living insignia” formation, with soldiers positioned to create the unit’s distinctive diagonal striped insignia, surrounded by artillery pieces. This type of military display was meant to demonstrate American capacity while building unit cohesion and pride, and perhaps avert a little boredom.

In contrast to these ceremonial arrangements, other photographs document the practical transportation and logistical elements that supported daily operations. An image of a young driver with his heavy-duty truck along what appears to be the Rhine riverbank represents the essential supply operations that maintained the American presence. The vehicle’s utilitarian design with solid rubber tires, wooden spoke wheels, and large cargo bed illustrates the practical equipment used to transport supplies, equipment, and personnel throughout the occupation zone.

French Military Presence

The next image shows a group portrait of four French soldiers in their distinctive uniforms. Easily identified by their characteristic “Adrian” helmets with the prominent crest ridge along the top and the horizon blue (bleu horizon) uniform that became emblematic of French forces during World War I, these men represent the broader Allied presence in post-war Germany.

France maintained the largest occupation zone in the Rhineland, reflecting their particular security concerns regarding Germany. French forces occupied territories including Mainz, while American forces centered on Coblenz and British forces on Cologne. Later, French forces took over the Coblenz occupation.

The portrait format was typical of military mementos during this era, allowing soldiers to document their service and send images to family members. The survival of any images at all is due to this distribution by soldiers to their home countries.

Beyond Coblenz

Not all images in the collection were taken in Coblenz itself. One photograph shows American personnel in a touring car filled with passengers in what may be the French Riviera, identifiable by its distinctive palm trees and Mediterranean architecture. Dating to 1921-1923 based on the automobile’s style, this photograph represents the recreational opportunities available to some American personnel during leave periods from their occupation duties.

Europe allowed for cultural and recreational experiences that would have been impossible for most Americans of this era. For many young Americans serving in the occupation forces, this European assignment represented their first—and perhaps only—opportunity to experience the wider world beyond their home communities.

Visual Legacies

The survival of these photographs, particularly those documenting the 1920 flood, represents a remarkable preservation of visual history that might otherwise have been lost entirely. With the bombing of the Lindstedt & Zimmermann studio during World War II, the unique nature of real photo postcards, and the general fragility of materials from this era, each surviving image offers a rare window into this formative period in world relations.

Karl and Änne Zimmermann’s work, along with that of contemporaries like Paul Stein, provides an invaluable visual chronicle of the first American occupation of European territory—a precedent for the much larger American military presence that would emerge in Europe after World War II. Their photographs capture not just military operations and formal events but the daily reality of cross-cultural interaction between Americans, French, and Germans during this unique historical moment and place.