Restoring a Family Treasure to Past Glory

I have seen the photo on the left a number of times in the recent past when I was researching Joseph and Juliana Schmidt in a number of collections. In fact, most branches of the family have copy of the photo in some sort or fashion. All of them seem to be a derivitive of this one particular “original”. I say that because all of the versions I have seen have the exact same damage pattern regardless of whether they are large or small and are a duotone or black and white. This summer I actually was finally able to examine the “original” that is pictured here. My cousin has this copy in her collection and I was surprised to find that the damage was not actually a part of the structure of that “original”. It seems that this image is a copy of the the true original. That said, it is a copy-desk duplicate that was most likely made a long time ago. It is printed on the same type of photographic paper of the era, it is backed with paper board and is virtually indistinguishable from other photos of the era. It is such a good copy that your eyes tell you that the scratches should be there as dents in the paper, but running your finger across the paper reveals the truth. It is as smooth can be with nary an abrasion. I can only speculate about  what happened to the original to cause the damage, but with six children around and pets, I can think of several probabilities. I also wonder what happened to the true, damaged original.

I scanned the copy-desk original on my scanner (yes I travel with it) and then spent a considerable amount of time over the past few months painstakingly repairing the damage. It was the most challenging photo I have ever restored, but it was an awesome thing this see the photo put back to what it once was. I am sure when it was originally damaged and then copied there was probably some heart ache over the damage. I am glad that more than a century later, I was able to put right what once went wrong. Now the Schmidt family has a nice copy of a very precious photo of the family’s patron and matron.