Kingsley Lost Slides
The Lost Slides of L.H. Kingsley
Hatfield, Massachusetts photographer at the turn of the 1900s
The Artist
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L. H. Kingsley mastered light and shadow, exposure and composition, to affix images of the people and places around him onto glass plate negatives in the early days of photography. He trained in all areas of printing, very likely including early photographic journalism, with the Star Printing Company of Northampton, MA. In 1881, he opened his own studio in Hatfield, and his work brought him wide renown as an artistic photographer, "appreciated by connoisseurs the world over" (Western Massachusetts, A History, 1636-1925, J. Lockwood).
Born in Hatfield in November of 1853, two years after the invention of glass plate negatives, Lewis Hubbard Kingsley was the sixth child of Moses and Rachel (Curtis) Kingsley, and shared his older brother Elbridge Kingsley's artistic bent and keen eye for detail. Together, the two traveled throughout the Connecticut River Valley and beyond, capturing life at the turn of the 20th century in photographs and paint. L. H. Kingsley was a known and respected photographer in his lifetime, as well as serving Hatfield as town clerk and other positions for 20 years and raising four children with his wife, Lizzie Josephine Dickinson. The recovery of these lost slides adds significantly to the existing body of work by this native son of Hatfield, and to the visual record of life in the area in the late 1800s. |
The Work
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The collection shared here is not at all the entirety of L. H. Kingsley's work, but provides a great example of his skill and range. All of these are the positive images of negatives made on glass plates with a large box camera. He photographed an assortment of landscapes, people, buildings, and objects in Hatfield, Whately, Hadley and beyond. The damaged slides, despite cracked glass or peeling emulsions, still help reveal the fashions, activities and trappings of life in the late 1800s.
Far too few of the images had any sort of label or identifying note; one reason for this website is to invite your insight into who and where and what the unidentified people and places might be. Please write down the caption number of any photos you think you can help identify, and email your citizen historian information to [email protected]
Places - Identified on original paper envelopes
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People
Buildings
Objects
The following slides were found in three of L.H. Kingsley's wooden slide boxes. Grooves in the sides to hold each pane of glass safely in place, even in the back of a wagon miles from home on unpaved roads. One of them is shown below, along with what the glass plate negatives actually look like.
Box One - Miscellaneous
Box Two - Miscellaneous
Box Three - Miscellaneous
These damaged slides remind us of the fragility of the medium, and how many things could have gone wrong between the moment of exposing the glass plate and their arrival at the museum. The negative could be under or overexposed, the emulsion could bubble or chip, the glass could break, the slides could have been lost completely, discarded as scrap or sold on ebay and stripped of all context and history. It is thanks to the history-minded people named below, and a good deal of luck, that this trove survived more than 100 years and was donated to the Town of Hatfield, where it can be shared in this new, digital, way.
Damaged
The Rediscovery
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Tucked away for roughly 100 years, the images began their slow journey back to light 50 years ago, when Joe Malinowski Jr. spied them as a child in his family home in Hadley, in a dark attic over a garage. All these years, Joe had the feeling there was something interesting there, something special. During the summer of 2020, in a global pandemic, conditions lined up for Joe to focus on the boxes of glass plates with smoky figures, buildings, and landscapes.
Joe contacted his friend, Hadley photographer Linda Hannum, to see what light she could shed on the intriguing cache of images. Linda recognized them immediately as late 1800s photo negatives and confirmed Joe's impression there was history to be seen, and saved, here. She called on Sloan Tomlinson, a Hatfield photographer with the skill and tools to scan the glass plates. In the 100 years in the attic, some of the slides cracked, and the medium that fixed a moment in time to a glass plate peeled in places. Most are missing the original paper sleeves that held identifying information, but about a dozen, remarkably, still retain their envelopes, showing L.H. Kingsley's signature and other identifying data. It is thanks to Joe and Linda that these images have returned to Hatfield, to be shared with the public in the Hatfield Historical Museum’s collection by the Hatfield Historical Society. Thanks, also, to the following people who funded the digitization of these 200+ glass slides: M. A. Wendolowski Farm, Holly Haase, Carol Wasserloos, Aimee Wendolowski, Kathy Rogers, Jennifer Lyons, Keri-Anne Motyka Gaughan and JoEllen MacKenzie. |
You may order prints of any of these images, and support the work of the Hatfield Historical Society at the same time! Write down the image number in the caption below
the photos you want, and then click here for details! |
The Equipment
The process of fixing images to glass with a wet emulsion was invented in 1851 by Fredrick Scott Archer, and was in continuous use through the 1880s. Dr. Richard Maddox invented a dry emulsion glass plate in 1873 and these were in continuous use well into the 1920s. L.H. Kingsley opened his own studio in Hatfield in 1881, and these plates were made with the dry technique.
The glass plates were originally packaged, and sometimes stored, in cardboard boxes, and once exposed, stored in wooden boxes. We don't have his camera, but the recovered glass plate negatives give us a window into his work and his world. |
Above photo by Kevin Gutting, courtesy of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, from the Nov 27, 2020 article by Steve Pfarrer - click below to read the article!
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This website created by Meguey Baker for the Hatfield Historical Society, copyright 2021