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November 1913. Kosciusko, Mississippi. "One of the workers (not the youngest) in the Kosciusko cotton mills. The superintendent objected to my photographing them." Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.
Polish families like mine, at least in the northeast, often dined on Kosciuszko brand mustard with their frequent kielbasa and rye bread or kaiser rolls, great with saurkraut. The spicy brown mustard had a photo of Tadeusz and a blue and gold label. It made your eyes light up and your stomach say "howdy". Yum. It is not available where I live now, (in the southwest) as I believe it may be a regional item. For most of my childhood, that was all I knew about George Washington's right hand man, until we studied the Revolutionary War. Imagine my surprise when I found out he was a real and heroic person and not just a mustard.
tterrace is correct that films and plate were fast enough for short fraction of a second exposures in bright sunlight. Still, they were still painfully slow by 21st century standards and required rather wide apertures to accomplish the feat.
Note how shallow the depth of field is in this picture. The "wide" aperture (probably in the f/3.5-4.5 range) and the large format conspire to yield a very shallow depth of field. The architectural images we see from the same time period generally show significant motion blurs when people are walking (ghosts anyone?) since those photographers would have chosen to stop the lens down to a small aperture to achieve deep depth of field and optimum sharpness.
The girl is walking (moving) and yet there is no ghosting or blur. In other photo movement didn't seem to be photographed as well, with most photos taken of people standing still. Had photographic processes changed by the time this was taken?
[Daylight exposures of a fraction of a second had long been the norm by this time. - tterrace]
I think the name is Eastern European, but that's how we (Mississippi Delta folk) pronounced it when we ventured up there for sporting events. We also pronounced other places Ell doh-RAY-doh Arkansas, MON-row LOO-zee-anna, and lah-FAY-et County Mississippi.
[Named after Polish patriot and American Revolutionary War hero Tadeusz Kościuszko. - tterrace]
October 1960. Oprah was born there too
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