Multiple Exposure

Carney Christie Scrapbook and Ephemera Collection

Ephemera Collection, Photograph Collection

C1: 123
ca.1900–1930
Four scrapbook albums, two photograph albums with 200+ photos, mixed ephemera

Unlike many of our Prints and Photographs Collections holdings, which derive from individual artists, photographers, and agencies, the Carney Christie Collection derives from many sources—family photos, postcards, handwritten correspondence (on hotel stationary), theater programs, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera—which dovetail into a mixed media portrait of an individual man.

A graduate of Staunton Military Academy, the actor Carney Pitcher Christie (1887–1932) gained early and enduring professional success on Broadway, perfecting the role of Pietro in Edward Locke’s comedy The Climax. Christie was the son of a prominent West Virginia druggist and brother to Mary Christie, a music teacher and sought-after pianist (and presumed assembler of the materials in our collection) with whom he often collaborated on popular “interpretive recitals” of Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Thomas Nelson Page. The family maintained residences in Richmond and Brooklyn, and a summer home in the resort town of Palmer Lake, Colorado, and Christie corresponded with them, especially Mary, during his theatrical tours all over the United States. According to one theater reviewer, he was “the very incarnation of buoyant youth.” About 1928, however, a “nervous collapse” forced Christie to quit touring and instead teach acting at the Leland Powers School in Boston. He later moved to Richmond to live with his … Read the rest

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Collection of Virginia Department of Labor and Industry Safety Posters

Photograph Collection

C1: 126
1953–1975
252 posters, 8.5 x 11 inches

“Safety is better than compensation.” This sentiment echoes—both explicitly and implicitly—through the world of these safety posters. Here cartoon workers are eaten by machines and lose limbs and eyes, all to the “music” of morbid puns and innocuous slogans (“You can’t be silly safely!”) reminiscent in style and sentiment to Heinrich Hoffmann’s 1844 children’s book, Struwwelpeter, in which violent punishments are merrily delivered to disobedient or imprudent children. The posters give a sense of a workplace ethos before the advent of political correctness. A notable softening of the posters’ visual style corresponds to a transition from artist Dick Poythress to Boyd Leffler of Salem, Virginia. As they progress through time they begin to suggest a subtle “holistic” interest in the lives of state employees. They conflate the professional and the personal, caution against overwork at home, emphasize the need for weekend rest and recreation, and even veer into sentimental and emotional territory quite out of character with the posters’ early comic approach.

Arrangement and access:
The posters are arranged chronologically.

C1:126 Collection of Virginia Department of Labor and Industry Safety Posters (LVA 10_1265_001)

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Through Virginia, 1935: A Scrapbook of a Trip Through Virginia, Washington DC and Pennsylvania

Ephemera Collection, Photograph Collection

C1: 097
1935
1 album, 12 x 17 inches, 40 pages, 130 photographs, mixed ephemera

“Through Virginia, 1935” was assembled, we speculate, by one of a group of three female auto tourists to commemorate their journey in the autumn of 1935. The album is a virtual collage of ephemera from the period, intermingling personal photographs with postcards and brochures from various chambers of commerce promoting all manner of historic, industrial, recreational, and natural attractions. The album not only brings together diverse ephemera from a particular historic moment in modern Virginia, it reveals the tourist’s desire to capture the experience of the road trip itself. The Virginia leg of this trip, including Richmond, Charlottesville, Virginia Beach, Hampton Roads, Fredericksburg, and Alexandria, occupies the bulk of the album, and includes original photos—extreme close-ups—of cotton and peanuts (southern novelties to a northern tourist) and the “old slave block” in Fredericksburg. A brochure proudly advertises Shenandoah Caverns as the only caves in the state with elevator service. In one instance, there are no fewer than six different brochures for Natural Bridge on a single page. There are also many photos from the D.C. area, including Washington’s tomb, the Lincoln Memorial, the Franciscan Monastery, “bird’s eye” shots from the top of the Washington Monument, and more “vacationy” pictures of the women goofing off on the … Read the rest

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J. H. Breazeale Jr. Photograph Album: Mules of World War I

Photograph Collection

C1: 105
ca.1915
1 album, 7 x 5 inches; 48 photo prints

Among our most unique holdings, this small and unassuming piece, assembled by Dr. J. H. Breazeale (1889–1966), a veterinarian who served in the Army Medical Corps, reflects the striking public-private dichotomies of life in wartime, serving apparently as both a family photo album and work journal. Approximately half of Breazeale’s forty-eight amateur photos endearingly capture his wife and young sons at home, with handwritten captions such as “Branson’s first trousers” and “Calling kitty.” The rest of the images document the grim duties of a wartime veterinarian, with sobering captions such as “These pens contain 1300 Missouri Mules,” “Shot for losing foot,” “Burial at sea,” and “Loading the dead wagon, Newport News, Va.” At the outset of World War I, the mule was indispensible for moving artillery, ammunition, and other supplies. It’s estimated that during the war more than 500,000 horses and mules were processed for use in Europe, with more than 68,000 killed in the course of action.

Provenance:
Purchased

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1939 New York World’s Fair Photograph Collection

Photograph Collection

C1: 001
ca. 1939
211 albums, many in duplicate and some in triplicate, 3,031 unique images

Touted as the largest and most magnificent exposition of all time, the New York World’s Fair opened at Flushing Meadow in April 1939. In the Court of States, one exhibition was strikingly different from the rest: the Virginia Room, “an island of quiet” amid the fair’s raucous and more sensational attractions. Leslie Cheek, Jr., designer of the Virginia Room, and his team of artists developed a plan for a spacious circular lounge with the visitor’s focus drawn to an ornamental fountain theatrically lit from above and below. Around the fountain’s statue—an allegorical representation of the “Spirit of Virginia” drawing water from the clouds—were clipped boxwoods and a series of deep cushioned seats and low tables. Cheek remarked that a visitor to the Virginia Room should find “an intelligently arranged display, free of ballyhoo and high pressure salesmanship.” The design offered tired fairgoers a place to sit, a chance to enjoy a complimentary glass of ice water served by a white-jacketed waiter, and an array of large photograph albums prepared by the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce.

Taken together, the Virginia Room albums can be thought of as a sprawling infomercial for the state, promoting it as a place not just of historic shrines and natural beauty, but as one of scientific, … Read the rest

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Carney Christie Scrapbook and Ephemera Collection

C1:123 Carney Christie Scrapbook and Ephemera Collection

C1:123 Carney Christie Scrapbook and Ephemera Collection

Collection of Virginia Department of Labor and Industry Safety Posters

C1:126 Collection of Virginia Department of Labor and Industry Safety Posters (LVA 10_1265_001)

Through Virginia, 1935: A Scrapbook of a Trip Through Virginia, Washington DC and Pennsylvania

C1:097 Through Virginia, 1935: A Scrapbook of a Trip Through Virginia, Washington DC and Pennsylvania.

J. H. Breazeale Jr. Photograph Album: Mules of World War I

C1:105 J. H. Breazeale Jr. Photograph Album: Mules of World War I

C1:105 J. H. Breazeale Jr. Photograph Album: Mules of World War I

1939 New York World’s Fair Photograph Collection

C1:001 1939 New York World’s Fair Photograph Collection.