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Bedouins from beyond the Red Sea


This photo, from the Pennsylvania Report Scrapbook, depicts “Bedouins from beyond the Red Sea“. The photo was clipped from some other source, and judging from the paper it’s on and what I can see of it, the photo was cut from a magazine. As the rest of the photos are from no later than 1904, we can place it quite comfortably in the late 1800s or very early 20th century. Bedouins, as you may know, were nomadic herders in northern africa and the arabic regions. Both appear to be women, with children riding on their shoulders (the kid on the left is rather naked), while the woman on the right has no shoes. For as nomadic as the bedouins were, I’d have thought it more difficult to find some willing to stand still in front of a stock backdrop for a family photo.

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Enid Brant, Scrapbooked

All we have to go on is her caption: Enid Brandt, San Francisco’s Child Pianist. Her photo comes from the Pennsylvania Report Scrapbook, what we’d consider ‘altered art’ today. The book was originally the “Pennsylvania Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1895,” but an industrious photo-lover cut photos out of magazines and glued them over the top of the less-than-interesting education statistics. Most photos appear to be from glossy magazines of the time, and they all seem to range in the 1900-1905 range, based on photos of politicians and other places. One thing missing from the scrapbook, despite the amount of California photos? The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Enid doesn’t appear in Google as growing into a prodigy and master of her instrument; I hope the talented young lady made it through the quake and fire.