Figure 1.--Here we have a image that we cannot identify, either the country or the group. The dealer is British, but we do not think the children are British. The white socks the boys are wearing were not common in Britain, at least for boys. Although we do notice boys wearing white socks, often knee socks, for special occassions. Thus was more common on the Continent. If we were to guess we would speculate the group was Italian, but we are not at all sure. We are fairly confodent the photograph was taken in the 1950s. It seems to be some kind of school performance group.
Most of the images we have archived either are identified or we can identify the country. Of couurse some countries are easier to identify than others, specially smaller countries. Here it is virtually impossible to identify the country involved. The major countries which produced the largest number of photographs, however, have many readily identifiable characteristics or garment styles. Not all are obvious and there is no absolute way of identifying the country when there no odentifying text or unique background. Accompanying text does not need to note the country. Just the language used can help identify the country. But many can be identified with a fair degree of accuracy. Neighboring contries complicate this matter, especially when there is a close cultural relationship. Belgium is greatly inflience by France. Austria, the Baltics, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, and Switzerland are inflienced by Germany, although influenced by Germany. The French speaking areas of Switzerland are more influenced by France. Much of Eastern Europe shows a German imprint. Here the large German fashion industry was an important factor. Ireland and to a lesser extent Norway show English influences. After World War II, especially by the 1970s we see less of these destinctive national styles. A kind of pan-European style emerges. One reason we post these inidentified images is that we hope readers will have some insights om the images, especially identifying the countries and dates. Our procedure here is to keep the imges here even after the country has been uidentified as the readers may find it interesting just how we identified the country involved.
Here we see another unidentified group of children. The dealer was British, but she has no idea where it came from. Dealers primarily source their photographs from their own country, but many handle iages from other countries. This group of younger children could have come from England, but we are not at all sure. The long stockings argue against that. Long stockings were worn in England, but not very commonly by the 1920s and this photigraph is clearly more recent than that. We are not even sure about the date. Our best guess would be the 1940s, but the late-30s or early-50s is a definite possibility. The boy's shirt at the right looks like the 50s. We would also guess that the group is German, primarily because if the long stockings. Now long stockings were worn into the 1960s in Eastern Europe, but the clothing here looks more like Western Europe. Another complication is that after World War II, German children began wearing patterned knee socks.
Performance Group (1950s)
Here we have a image that we cannot identify, either the country or the group (figure 1). The dealer is British, but we do not think the children are British. The white socks the boys are wearing were not common in Britain, at least for boys. Although we do notice boys wearing white socks, often knee socks, for special occassions. Thus was more common on the Continent. If we were to guess we would speculate the group was Italian, but we are not at all sure. We are fairly confident the photograph was taken in the 1950s. It seems to be some kind of school performance group.
We found this snapshot of children playing we believe in the 1950s. They look to be playing in a park or some undeveloped area away from home, perhaps part of a birthday party. This is unclear. But the age of the children and the fact that they were photograph means that they were playing under adult supervision. It is undated, but we would guess was taken in the 1950s. We were unsure where it was taken. We assumed at first it was an American snapshot, but were unsure when we noted that some of the boys might be wearing rompers. This would have suggested France. The photograph was rather unclear because of the way it was taken. We were unsure about the rompers. We subsequently found several other snapshots with the some of the boys clearly wearing not only rompers, but also smocks meaning that it was obviously not American. And the dealer was French. So we are clearly talking about French children here.
