Photographic Snapshot Print Characteristics: Edges


Figure 1.-- This 1949 snapshot shows a Baltimore, Maryland boy holding hands with his mother. The snap shot had straight edges and white margins. The snap shot was 5 x 3 1/2 inches. This was an Easter portrait. The boy is Stephen Jones holding hands with his mother Mildred. The family resided at 810 Winans Way near Leakin Park. The father was Stanley Jones. Stephen was born in 1945 so he was about 4 years oild here. He wears a peaked cap, overcoat, and short pants, probably part of an Eton suit.

There were also different ways of doing the edges. There were clean cut edges, jagged or serrated edges, and pinking. The most common approach was straight cut edges. We see straight cut edges from the earlist amateur pptints in the late 19th century and more commonly after the turn-of-the 20th century when amateur photography became commonplace and millions of images sudenly emerged. Serration was another option. We are not sure what the serration was about. We think it was condsidered to be decortive. Perhaps readers will have a better idea of why serration became so popular. The pinking was more of a regular perforation than a serration. Pinking was more common with cabinet card portraits. The straight cut and the serrated edges were available at the same time. Here we see an American snapshot with strraight edges in 1949 (figure 1). The stright edges existed throughout the 20th century, And we begin to see serrated (scalloped or irregular) edges and not just straight (smooth) edges. There were also differences in the serrationnboth heavy and light serration. We are just beginning to sort out the chronolohies. The serrated edge print on the previous page was from Europe and was dated 1933. And I recall serrated edges in America during the 1950s. We note the serrated edges during the 1930s-50s. (this is just a prelimary assessment. They were probzbly available in the 1920s and 60s as well. This is in America and Germany. We are not yet sure about other countries.





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Created: 10:50 AM 6/11/2012
Last updated: 10:50 AM 6/11/2012