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May 08, 2008 |
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James Spader(?) in a Dress
FOUND by Rachel O'Toole
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Found in an old, empty, leaky building. Her(?) hands are particularly manly.
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The Signing August 18, 2005 |
Clutch August 08, 2005 |
Historia December 19, 2005 |
Damaged Heart November 08, 2005 |
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
Aging is a cruel process. She looks like she's feeling a bit old, empty and leaky as well.
I think the finder is on to something...she does look strangely like James Spader.
I don't think she looks old though, she seems fairly young actually. The way she has her head slightly forward gives you the feeling she is waiting for you to say something
Lastly, Jerry would most definitely dump her with those man hands!
I love her earnest expression.
Actually, this is a truly beautiful photography, her left hand gently touching the table. It appears as if she were caught be surprise, pausing inquisitively, earnestly pondering. However, this pose must have been planned, perfectly still.
The table and the dress are equally ornate.
This photo is amazing. And it's sad that it was found in an old building. What kind of a building? A house? Apartment? Store? Who did she belong to? What else was found there? And who is James Spader?
Oups.
*a truly beautiful photograph*
Oups. Again.
*by surprise*
LOL @ the title...
I LOVE her dress. It's gorgeous!
An Abandoned Ancestor finds a home on the Internet! Thanks, Rachel, for sharing an intriguing Find.
I wonder what kind of building it was found in. An abandoned warehouse? an old apartment building? A delapidated one-room schoolhouse? An old barn or other outbuilding slated for teardown to make room for more condos?
Women who work hard with their hands, be it scrubbing floors, scrubbing laundry, making quilts and clothing, washing dishes, butchering pigs, etc.. tend to have strong, perhaps "manly" hands. This woman, while she looks somewhat scholarly in her spectacles, also looks like she worked hard, every day of her life.
She almost looks like she's about to say, "c'mon smarta$$.. you wanna GO? I'll take you outside right now and whoop your a$$...." She could take me in a fair fight, I'm sure.
OK, Clover.. great minds thinking alike! We've simulposted on both finds today!
maybe if James Spader had a sister ... or maybe she is his great great great aunt?
I think she is beautiful, but those epaulets are weighing her down.
This photo seems amazingly well preserved. Weird how it looks like the room she's in is already abandoned, empty with just the table that was too heavy to move. I find this photo sad
GRAMMY!
Stunning photograph. Not old at all. Take away the specs, the unflattering hair and the frumpy (mourning?) dress and you have a very acute intelligent lady of maybe 35 with a lot of opinions, an inquiring mind and a sly sense of humour, maybe with a somewhat combative demeanour because of her oppressed position in a male-dominated society, but maybe not. She could be a governess, a schoolteacher, even a librarian though I don’t know if there were such things at the time (1880s?).
Could perhaps be a photographer’s studio setup, but taken by daylight not flash.
Her hands might be a bit swelled up from having to hold the pose for the camera.
The stiff angle of her neck might even be because she has a brace to hold her head in place for the time exposure?
q.v. comments on 'Found in the Walls':
http://www.foundmagazine.com/comments/1614
She's clearly a Steampunk follower.
Poor thing. Bless her (his ?) heart.
To me her hands just look a little bony, not "manly" at all. Remember, back in the day physical labor was the norm - one needed a little callousing.
However, she does appear to be wearing armor. That's odd. Secret society, the Lady Knights of the Library?
Great photo. She does look like James Spader though. He one of the prettiest men I've ever seen. Put a dress on him (when he was younger) and he would be a beautiful woman.
@Jonathan, IMO you've overestimated her age by about 10 years; her eyes look much younger than 35. And the hair and dress were probably very stylish and acceptable for her time - my guess is 1890s. But I do agree with your assessment of governess, librarian or school teacher.
Despite the fact that she does look like the actor James Spader, I find her attractive and believe she was probably sould have been a great person to have had as a friend.
@Librarian, Jonathan, Clover, and all lovers of foundness, I just became aware of an interesting book entitled "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic" that deals with the owners and contents. There is a web site www.suitcaseexhibit.org that gives you a taste of the book.
I'm glad fashion has progressed to track suits, sweatpants, etc...I can't imagine chillin out in that dress, let alone scrubbing floors and butchering pigs. She does look rather elegant though.
@Freonz---thanks for the book referral, I just reserved it from my library!
This is actually Agnes Moorehead's sister.
If you look very carefully in the background doorway - you can see Joseph Cotton rehearsing his role for "The Magnificent Ambersons."
The only way you can get hands that look like that is to jerk off John Wayne.
do you speak from personal experience, turbo?
OK, put a blond, feathered wig and a popped-collar polo shirt on that woman, and she is a dead ringer for Steff (James Spader)in Pretty in Pink!
I think she's young, too. I'd guess maybe early 30s, although her glasses are aging her a lot, and making her look more homely than she is. Her waist is absolutely tiny! I think that helps add some femininity back her way, though.
Her hands don't look especially "manly" to me, just rougher than our dainty hands today. She was probably doing a lot more hardwork and chores. Even if she is well off, she could have very well had to have sewn the dress she's wearing by hand.
And it's too bad the bottom right was ripped off b/c that is usually where it has the little emblem of the studio in older photographs. We could have at least located a city or narrowed down to a date w/ that.
I think she looks like the love child of Oscar Wilde and James Spader.
it's a fashionable gown, designed by Christian Siriano, AKA "Princess Puffysleeves", winner of the most recent cycle of Project Runway.
He's modeling it himself. (Santino Rice may have had a hand in some of the detailing.)
Imagine what a lil Chanel eyeliner would do for her....
She and I modeled together in Venice. Boy, that was a week to remember!
Fierce!
i think she actually looks like Cillian Murphy
i wish i was a love child.
@ Christina, young is a relative term. Maybe Jan's in her teen's, or 20's. 30's only seem young to those of us who are 30 or over.
Thirty's not old! Hell, I've got clothes older than that!!
oops...did I say that out loud?
I'm 23 myself.
I think 30 is still "younger." I was just shocked at how many early commentors thought she was "old." I thought they were thinking she was 50s and 60s and I just didn't see it.
@Mona Lisa: "those of us who are 30 or over"? Hahaha! Underestimating a tad there, eh? Oh well Babe, you'll always be younger than me, although I'm sure you're not MY love child.
Come to think of it - I've been 27 for a very long time
She's kind of like the love child of James Spader and Cilliian Murphy, if one of them possessed a uterus....
The tiny waist and rigid carriage are both caused by wearing corsets and stays, which in those days were made of steel and whalebone covered in cloth. My grandmother wore such things when she came over to the US from Copenhagen with her 4 sisters. There was a thing called a "foundation garment" that went from the breastbone to below the waist, compressing everything in its path. Talk about "lifts and separates"!! Naughty girls had special ones that put everything they had right under their chin (anyone could look stacked in one of those) while "nice" girls went for the more flattened, less defined look in this photo. It cinched in the waist (the benchmark was if a man could span your waist with his hands)and came down to a point front and back. Some were built with "the Grecian bend" in mind...creating permanent curvature of the spine and later a dowager's hump. My grandmother was told to sleep in her corsets or she'd never get used to them! No wonder women fainted all the time and were plagued with "women's complaints" such as constipation. You would be. It's amazing they could even draw a deep breath, let alone do housework. I suppose, though, there were different strengths and shapes of corsets for different "classes" of women just as there were different types of dress. A "fine lady's" dress had set-in sleeves made tight to the bodice, since all the work she would do would be to raise a cup to her lips, or do a bit of embroidery--no heavy lifting and *certainly* never raising her arms over her head!
Sorry, rambling. As a child of the bra-burning era, I can't imagine wearing full corsets and stays, long sleeves and high necks on a farm in the Midwest in high summer...but granma managed it. Somehow. Boy she was tough.
totally scary.
thats all i have to say.
@Freonz ... thank you for the reference to "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic" that deals with the owners and contents, with itsweb site www.suitcaseexhibit.org that gives you a taste of the book. Wow. Great online exhibit. I'm particularly touched because I'm in the midst of cataloging a couple hundred annual reports from state "lunatic asylums" across the US, mostly 19th century. (Others may say I'm "touched" for other reasons....) The book/exhibit is a powerful real-life Found.
Mona, my hands are soft and supple thanks to years of jerking off Jamie Lee Curtis.
She looks as if she was put into the photo. Her dress stands out among the same color background.
But nonetheless, this photo is amazing.
She had a friend who was going out with a "low talker". Before she knew it, she was forced to wear puffy sleeves before a crowd. For some reason, my mind wants to put Denny Crane's face on this dress! WTF is that about?
Fascinating picture! I love to look at old pictures, from early in the 20th cent. or from the 19th cent. and wonder about the people in them. Who were they? What were their hopes and dreams? Who did they love?
I think the reason she may look old to some who see her, is because despite her biological age she was "older" than someone her same age is today. As the human race grows healthier and medicine keeps us alive longer than we ever lived in the past, the ages at which it is normal to hit certain milestones such as marriage, having children, retiring from work etc. continues to get pushed back. Today it's quite normal to not be married or have kids at 30. In her day, if you weren't married by 25 you were a spinster. In her day someone was considered elderly at 60.Today, 60 is the start of a whole new life that will likely last for another 25 to 30 years.
The point is that perspectives on age change, both as an individual goes through life and as society, technology and heath care change.
(hmm...can't sign in...)
No wedding ring as I can see. Well-to-do but not flash dress. Looks definitely like daylight through the window for the photo - looong exposure time. Possibly a keepsake for a beau heading away somewhere?
I'm going with the schoolteacher call. One who has to scrub the school room floor etc.
With the location (not exactly, I know), I't has a very Anne of Green Gables vibe to me. (The later books).
Lovely find.
Yeah, thanks Freonz, that is very interesting and sad. I'm going to buy that book. That kind of thing is right up my alley.
Good points, Cubby.
Clover, did anyone answer you? James Spader is an actor on a TV show called "Boston Legal."
Fascinating background, Orinoco. Would you agree with Freon's guess of 1890s?
Thank you, Rachel for submitting this cool photo.
My guess is early 20th Century, pre-war. Just a guess.
When my great grandmother died, the preacher didn't know her well, but talked to the family, and folks that did know her. He did a wonderful euglogy based on her hands. How her hands held babies with colic, tended to her garden, fed the multitude of barn cats, gathered eggs,fed the field hands and the occasional traveler. She also made all the kids clothes and rag rugs, canned, and kept the house spotless. He referenced all this to her wonderful hands. I never thought of her in that way - she'd been in a nursing home for years, and I went with my grandmother to see her every now and then. Now that my grandmother is in a nursing home, I enjoy going and visiting and simply holding her hand. She seems to enjoy it, and I feel linked to my family in a way I never would have thought, if not for that preacher way back when.
The lady in this photo has amazing hands. I hope she had someone to hold them.
@chillin, lucky you! I checked the local library and they don't have it. Like "I have a box of people's stuff", I'll probably end up buying a copy of the book.
@Librarian, how interesting that "The Lives They Left Behind" found you at a time when you are working with similar information. I've been experiencing bits of the exhibit at a time; it would be overpowering to try to do it all at once. If I'd been the one to have stumbled on the attic full of suitcases I'd have been fired. My supervisor would have found me cross-legged on the floor going through all the bits and pieces of lives long past and the job at hand long forgotten.
I'm going to look for that book about suitcases left behind. That sounds fascinating.
That site is fascinating, in a Found sort of way, but also devastatingly sad. I mourn for the people who were sent away because they sang,whistled, were boisterous, or outspoken.
I'm sure there was more to the story, for someone to have been institutionalized for their entire adult life.. there had to have been. Right?
What haunting images, haunting stories. I will definitely be looking for that book. (*reminds me: I still haven't gotten a library card here yet!)
I was looking at that site at work today, and I think my dread fascination with it gave my co-worker a little insight that he might never have had otherwise.
OK, moving on: Carla Sue in Indiana, that was, quite possibly, the most beautiful and moving post I've ever read in the Found Magazine comments. Ever. Thank you for sharing such a lovely thought.
one word: hot
Wow, another wonderful bunch of responses here at Found....
Gulp, Librarian - what a heavy load, cataloguing many many "suitcases in the attic"
CarlaSue - beautiful. Beautiful eulogy; beautiful ponderings.
** I remember listening to some Roots-of-the-12-Steps tapes. One item struck me: in America, even until the first decade of 1900s, if a citizen of a town complained that someone else was an alcoholic, that's ALL that was needed to "commit" the "alcoholic" to an asylum! I don't know how widespread this practice was -- but it could offer some opportunities for abuse, wouldn't you say?
My grandmother was born in 1897, the 7th out of 9 children, on a farm in Minnessota. One of the ways they entertained themselves was memorizing & reciting poems.
One poem that she taught me was:
I wish I was a rock, just a sittin' on a hill
Doin' nothin' ALL DAY LONG, just a sittin' still.
I would eat, I wouldn't drink, I wouldn't even wash!
I'd just sit still a thousand years, and rest meself, bygosh!
(As a teenager, I romantically thought "I was born 100 years too late!" Then, I thought about aspirin -- toilet paper -- feminine aids -- birth control (!) and became glad I was born when I was.)
Freonz...thanks for that website. I'm going to buy that book. It's fascinating. I work in a psychiatric hospital, and i've always been fascinated by who people were before their illness, and it's really helped me not be frustrated and lost in this work.
Librarian. I wish i could help you with that job, it sounds fascinating.
Don't be mean; she's lovely. Just think, she had no gym, no tanning bed (tans are ugly anyway), no makeup artists........don't be jealous!
Oh my goodness, Camelia, that's my alltime favorite poem!! MY mom has it on an old picture that was her grandmothers! (it's a very old, glass picture- I can't really explain it.) When I saw my Mom last month I reminded her that I WANT IT, so don't give it to anyone else!
With hands like that I bet she'd make an awesome piano player. Who knows, maybe she was.
Wow, Chrome... I am constantly surprised at how many 'kindred spirits' are on this board! I've never met anybody who'd heard of that poem before... I wanna know about the picture!! Are the words the same??
This poor woman is rolling in her grave at all of these comments, the shoulders of her dress flapping and getting all tangled up. But I'm still LOLing!
OMIGOSH - I committed a misleading typo!
Poem:
I wish I was a rock, just a sittin' on a hill
Doin' nothin' ALL DAY LONG, just a sittin' still.
I wouldN'T eat, I wouldn't drink, I wouldn't even wash!
I'd just sit still a thousand years, and rest meself, bygosh!
(One thing I thought was worthy-of-note is that a "thousand years" in their era was equivalent to a "million years" in our era -- as a gross exaggeration, of course.)
she does look like james spader.
beautiful dress, nice small glasses, her hands look like working hands to me.
she is actually pretty for a find around this time. usually photographs around this era [assuming] have a vague sad deep longing look on their faces. she is smurking a bit, this is a great find.
I want that table in the photo...
creeeeeeepy.
this reminds me of the haunting.
or the others.
thumbs down.
great find, though.
p.s. the spam protection questions are easy again! hooray! 1+1+1 equals?
I think she's beautiful.
Eerie...in a non-scary kind of way.
Fantastic FIND, amazing example of how thin women's waistlines were then, with the corsets and stays.
I wonder what kind of building this was FOUND in?
RACHEL?
Was anyone else really baffled about the two movies, Crash and Crash? I, myself, could not believe that the porn-y Crash was up for all the awards (though it was a good movie.) Of course, it was the other Crash. This picture of James Spader is no surprise.
Wow I wish I lived back then.. except for slavery/segregation.. and no women's rights.. well okay, I'm glad I don't live in that time period, but it's so interesting!
Are y'all crazy? This women looks beautiful and intelligent.
I think she looks a bit like Scarlett Johansson
M, nobody said that she's not beautiful. They said she looks like James Spader who was notoriously pretty in his younger days, I see a touch of Oscar Wilde, he was pretty too, in my opinion.
I could cry looking at anonymous pictures like this. So much context lost forever. I have similar pictures of people I know are relatives, but no way of ever knowing who they are.
"James Spader in a Dress???"
Oh...my...GAWD, that is funny!!!