Back to Addie Hammel’s photo album…
I don’t know anything about this group. I wonder whether maybe it’s a piano teacher with her students, but that is just wild speculation based on the fact that we know Addie studied piano.
The only identifications I have are Addie Hammel (upper right), Bessie Hammell (front), Lena Saylor (left of Bessie). The only reason I know Lena’s name is that there is an individual portrait of her in the album with her name and age written on the back. That portrait looks like it was taken about the same time as this one, so she was evidently about 20 in both. In 1905 Addie would have turned 19 and Bessie 17.
Just based on how the people are arranged, if this is a teacher with her students, I assume the teacher is upper left, and maybe Addie is the leading student. All utter speculation, though. If there is significance to Bessie’s reclining posture I can’t guess what it might be. Suggestions welcome.
Were I the photographer in this situation I would consider the tight conposition a success, to have each of the faces in this group clearly delineated, balanced. All look at the camera but Addie. Is she self-conscious about her crossed-eyes? I am right about that aren’t I?
I also wondered about her not looking at the camera, and her crossed eyes occurred to me. I’ll be posting a couple of portraits of her in a couple of days from about this time (maybe a couple of years earlier), and her crossed eyes don’t stand out that much, it seems to me. In one of them it isn’t even obvious that they’re crossed at all. You can decide for yourself, but to me it isn’t nearly as extreme as what I remember from seeing her in person decades later. But that doesn’t prove anything one way or the other about whether she might have been self-conscious about them anyway.