This post is intended to solicit your participation in responding to the wealth of images and other artifacts in the CSNY collection in part to share these with the public, to make the “collection” concrete rather than abstract.  Have a favorite image or other artifact?  What makes it your favorite?   I’ll help you share your response here.  Accession info for the image below can be found at the end of this post.

Earlier this year, I volunteered some hours writing accession info on the back of over a thousand postcard prints.  The perk for me was being able to look at the prints.  This image, taken July 30, 1913, popped out at me.   Starting from the young woman’s enigmatic smile, there’s an epic here.  First, who is she, why is she there, why is she smiling at the photographer on this Wednesday, almost 111 years ago? 

What’s her name?  Why had she come to this location?  Has she come here with the photographer?  What impact–if any–did this day at the prism have on her life?  What waterborne traffic might travel here in 2024?  How has contemporary infrastructure transformed this place?

A railroad/heavy machinery  historian would look at the locomotive and cars above or the steam shovel below and identify models.  No doubt within several degrees of separation from CSNY members and friends such historians are out there.

Who’s the workman leaning in the forward doorway of the cab?  Is he talking to someone else inside?  See the word Bucyrus lower back of the cab?  Here from the American Canal Society is some Bucyrus info that might lead somewhere.  

Upper left side of the postcard shows more than a dozen people on the far side of the prism.  Working?  If so, what exactly are they doing?  How were they organized and what compensation did they receive?  Is that a wagon of some sort along the trees?

Rounding out my response by returning to the smiling woman who puts sparkle on this scene of industry, I see structures on both sides of the prism, maybe a storage tank to the left and a farm top center.  Is there a cofferdam mid-prism?

Here’s the accession info.  If I knew what “sta. 2200 East” and “Cont. 23” meant, I’d love to return to this location and reshoot it in July 2024  for a “then-now”  post.  

I have another post like this coming, featuring a certain aqueduct with a compelling person on it, but if you tell me you’d like to create Personal Response #2, your turn is next.