Bringing back the ghost of a Sepia Saturday past for this week! For Sepia Saturday 234, I went over a visit my great grandma Olga (Powis) Kitko had with a childhood friend, Mildred Witherow, in Michigan. The theme image was “Spirit Photography” and while I don’t believe in ghosts or anything supernatural, I have this great photo above with a double exposure that ties in nicely since “Spirit Photography” was actually just deliberate double exposures whether it happened on the negatives themselves or during the printing process.
Anyway, I think it’s neat that my great grandma kept this photo since so many double exposures were discarded as mistakes. You can see Mildred on the far left, and Olga is sitting next to her in the glasses. I believe the man just to Olga’s left in the back left corner of the table is Alvin Witherow. They’re clearly having a nice dinner together, there are smiles and you can almost hear the laughter. Olga is the only one looking at the camera, so I have to guess that she handed her camera to someone to take a photo but no one else was looking at the photographer! I think it makes for a neat image overall, even with the inadvertent double exposure. The photo was developed in September of 1960 and from the other photos it looks like the visit was over the summer, so the film was developed and photos printed, I’d imagine, not long after they were taken. Olga was born in 1900 so she looks to be about 60 in the photo which helps confirm the date printed on the photo.
