"The Other Swedes"
~ Honoring Them and Remembering Them ~ The Smoky Valley Writers ~
Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy
~ Honoring Them and Remembering Them ~ The Smoky Valley Writers ~
Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy
2013 "Through the Lens of B.G. Gröndal: Keeper of His Time"
~ The Words of Mrs. Eddy
"Studio Cameras" "Studio Remembered" "Gröndal's Career"
"Photography as an Art Form" "Professional Organization"
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STUDIO CAMERAS
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STUDIO CAMERAS
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"When the studio was sold in 1945, B. G. 's 11x14 portrait camera, made by the Century Camera Co. and patented in 1867, was not included in the sale but was shipped to Seattle to his son, Dr. Bror Leonard Gröndal. Dr. Gröndal was a noted professor of forestry at the University of Washington, and an expert in micro photography. The camera is now part of the Philip B. Robbins Collection at the Museum of History and Industry, Seattle, Washington. (Robbins was the grandson of Dr. Bror Leonard Gröndal, and the great-grandson of B. G.)
"Of the camera, the Museum curator wrote: "It is particularly noteworthy, a truly grand piece of equipment, in excellent condition and featuring so many interesting accessories." It is encased in a handsome rosewood cabinet. According to William Henry Jackson, the 11x14 was necessary for big pictures, since satisfactory enlargements from small negatives could not be made. (Time Exposure, The Autobiography of William Henry Jackson)
"Another turn-of-the century camera, equipped with a 16-inch Zeiss lens, though awkward to maneuver, was the finest ever made for portraiture and was sold with the studio. The camera used 5x7 film, and the large 5x7 negative was printed using an enlarger that could handle the larger-size negative. The negatives could not be printed on any of today's modern enlargers and this camera was traded by owner Dale Hoag when he needed more modern equipment. The enlarger is now owned by the Old Mill Museum in Lindsborg. Shown in the 2006 retrospective, it is not currently on display.
"B.G. wore a black satin skull cap in the studio. It has been speculated that rather than remove the lens cap, which might disturb the focused camera, he simply covered the lens with the black skull cap, quickly whipping it away to expose the film."
"Of the camera, the Museum curator wrote: "It is particularly noteworthy, a truly grand piece of equipment, in excellent condition and featuring so many interesting accessories." It is encased in a handsome rosewood cabinet. According to William Henry Jackson, the 11x14 was necessary for big pictures, since satisfactory enlargements from small negatives could not be made. (Time Exposure, The Autobiography of William Henry Jackson)
"Another turn-of-the century camera, equipped with a 16-inch Zeiss lens, though awkward to maneuver, was the finest ever made for portraiture and was sold with the studio. The camera used 5x7 film, and the large 5x7 negative was printed using an enlarger that could handle the larger-size negative. The negatives could not be printed on any of today's modern enlargers and this camera was traded by owner Dale Hoag when he needed more modern equipment. The enlarger is now owned by the Old Mill Museum in Lindsborg. Shown in the 2006 retrospective, it is not currently on display.
"B.G. wore a black satin skull cap in the studio. It has been speculated that rather than remove the lens cap, which might disturb the focused camera, he simply covered the lens with the black skull cap, quickly whipping it away to expose the film."
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THE STUDIO REMEMBERED
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THE STUDIO REMEMBERED
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"Because she spent many hours in the studio as a child, B.G.'s granddaughter remembers the studio as it was from the thirties until it was sold and subsequently remodeled on the southeast corner of Main and State.
"The reception room at the front of the studio was for conducting business: making appointments for "sittings" (in-house photographs), ordering photographs or picking up orders, selection frames and the "mounts" (cardboard on which the photo would be mounted), leaving "Kodak" film to be developed and printed, and buying personal cameras and film. On the southeast side of the room was a closet storing finished work and products for sale. Adjacent to the closet was a display cabinet holding the cash register. B.G 's desk and chair were on the north, in front of a window and next to a large glassed-in case displaying frames and recent photographs. The men's restroom, also used as a changing room, was in the southwest corner of this front room.
"The sittings were made in the 16-foot-high room in the middle of the building that could hold up to 40 people. It housed the large camera, a collection of lamps on stands, furniture for posing, including risers for large groups, backdrops, and props to amuse children. It was dominated by the large north skylight. The ladies' restroom for changing clothes was in the northwest corner.
"In the back work room, located in the east end of the building, were the giant shears, glue pots, tape bearing the B. G. Gröndal logo (damperned when drawn from the roll across a wet sponge), pencils, paper, rulers, and all the tools necessary to assemble the photographs in frames and mountings. In additions to the storage cupboards and counters were rolls of brown paper and string. There was a hooded desk used for retouching where Ester Johnson leaned forward to her task. During sports season a small brown radio was tuned to a game.
"At the top of the inside wall, about 8 feet above the workroom floor, was a small room for storage of mounts and frames. It was accessed by a pull-down ladder.
"Next to the workroom in the building's southeast corner were two rooms: a darkroom for printing and enlarging the negatives (where granddaughter Margy sat for many hours, just to be near Grandpa) and the room for washing them. In this washing room white porcelain trays holding film and prints were nestled in lead-covered sinks where the water tap was always opened to a gentle stream.
"A large trap door on the floor of the workroom opened to stairs descending to the basement. The basement contained the film developing area in one corner and a furnace with a boiler that supplied heat to the studio through hot water registers. The floor was earthen. To a child, it was a dark, scary place."
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GRÖNDAL'S CAREER
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GRÖNDAL'S CAREER
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"B. G.'s 61-year career in the photography business is noteworthy because it spanned the development of photography.
"In the days of the 19th century, photographers bought chemicals as raw material from traveling drummers and mixed the formulas for their work. B.G. began with wet glass plates. The glass plate negatives were prepared with a wet collodium coating and sensitized. Very early in the morning plates would be made to be used that day. They had to be kept cool since they deteriorated with heat. Again, early in the morning on printing days, sheets of paper, called "printing out papers" on which the sun would print the final photograph, were coated, dried, and cut. In his early training in St. Paul, B.G. loved the extreme accuracy required for the painstaking job. It appealed to his sharp mind. He progressed to commercial dry plates, and finally, commercial sensitized films.
"Always enthusiastic about new inventions and techniques, he would have surely been entranced by the photography of the present day.
"William Henry Jackson penned the observation that the Leica, and even the simplest Kodak camera were still undreamed miracles: "It is hard for many people to comprehend the universal importance of the professional during the decades preceding the 90s."
"A successor to the photographer's craft of making his own glass negatives and "printing-out-paper" were gelatin dry plates and printing papers that were available commercially. These papers were one of the standard photographic papers in use for many decades beginning in the late 1890s. The pictures were spoken of as sun pictures because the sun was used to produce contact prints in daylight. In May of 1903, B.G. lamented he had several thousand pictures that couldn't be printed due to the cloudy weather.
"Retouching could be done to enhance the photograph. It wasn't easy. Many patrons would ask to have the plates retouched so they could hide details that didn't suit them.
"Double-exposure pictures, in which the subject appeared twice, perhaps in shirtsleeves on one side of a checker-board and smartly dressed on the other side, occasioned much comment.
"Many of the early studio portraits that B.G. made were called "cabinet photographs." Only one picture was made on a negative. Albums were designed to hold the prints which measured about 4x5 1/2 inches and were mounted on a 6 1/2 x 4 1/4-inch cardboard.
"By 1899, B. G. was using prints made on collodion-chloride or gelatin chloride paper that was produced by The General Aristo Company, formed in 1899 in Jamestown, New York, with George Eastman as treasurer. The cardboard mount was distinctive because the lettering was in green and labeled "Aristo-type." Jamestown was a city with many Swedish immigrants, which may have led to B.G.'s patronage of that product. Later, the Eastman Company purchased the stock of the American Aristotype Co.
"Though a photographer, Gröndal also developed X-rays for the local doctors. The local paper reported: "B.G. Gröndal developed a plate the other day which looked rather queer. It looked like something from a haystack to a map of Hindustan. After we made a few guesses we were told that it was the X-ray photograph of a man's knee taken by Drs. Lagerstrom and Pihlblad."
"On February 24, 1888, the local paper reported that "Mr. Gröndal made several transparencies for the college geological collections last week. This is something that no photographer in Kansas has ever tried before. Most work of that kind is done only in the city of New York. Hurrah for Lindsborg!"
'My father detested tintypes,' wrote his son Bror Leonard. (Bror Leonard, known as Leonard, was the second child who was born in 1889 in Round Rock. The family had returned there for several months where they still owned the studio.) Bror remembers: "Dad used a tintype camera with multiple lenses (four, I believe). After exposure, he developed the ferrotypes in ferrous sulfate, which was dissolved in a 20 to 1 mixture of water and alcohol, somewhat acidulated with acetic and nitric acids. It is probably for that reason, he regarded William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic candidate for the presidency, whose platform included the coinage of silver in a 20 to 1 ratio to gold, as a 'loud-mouthed tin-type.' The tintypes were next fixed in either cyanide or a fairly strong solution of 'hypo' (sodium thiosulfate) followed by thorough washing and forced drying over a wide, flat-wicked kerosene burner. Finally, the tintypes were varnished with a solution of rosin in gasoline, again being force-dried. The highly glossed tintypes were then cut apart, placed in a folder, and handed to the customer. 'Fifty cents, please;!' this left a profit of about 15 cents."
"Photographing the Messiah Chorus before the advent of electricity required considerable work to get it set up. Three stands with powder to light the building had to be set off simultaneously."
"In the days of the 19th century, photographers bought chemicals as raw material from traveling drummers and mixed the formulas for their work. B.G. began with wet glass plates. The glass plate negatives were prepared with a wet collodium coating and sensitized. Very early in the morning plates would be made to be used that day. They had to be kept cool since they deteriorated with heat. Again, early in the morning on printing days, sheets of paper, called "printing out papers" on which the sun would print the final photograph, were coated, dried, and cut. In his early training in St. Paul, B.G. loved the extreme accuracy required for the painstaking job. It appealed to his sharp mind. He progressed to commercial dry plates, and finally, commercial sensitized films.
"Always enthusiastic about new inventions and techniques, he would have surely been entranced by the photography of the present day.
"William Henry Jackson penned the observation that the Leica, and even the simplest Kodak camera were still undreamed miracles: "It is hard for many people to comprehend the universal importance of the professional during the decades preceding the 90s."
"A successor to the photographer's craft of making his own glass negatives and "printing-out-paper" were gelatin dry plates and printing papers that were available commercially. These papers were one of the standard photographic papers in use for many decades beginning in the late 1890s. The pictures were spoken of as sun pictures because the sun was used to produce contact prints in daylight. In May of 1903, B.G. lamented he had several thousand pictures that couldn't be printed due to the cloudy weather.
"Retouching could be done to enhance the photograph. It wasn't easy. Many patrons would ask to have the plates retouched so they could hide details that didn't suit them.
"Double-exposure pictures, in which the subject appeared twice, perhaps in shirtsleeves on one side of a checker-board and smartly dressed on the other side, occasioned much comment.
"Many of the early studio portraits that B.G. made were called "cabinet photographs." Only one picture was made on a negative. Albums were designed to hold the prints which measured about 4x5 1/2 inches and were mounted on a 6 1/2 x 4 1/4-inch cardboard.
"By 1899, B. G. was using prints made on collodion-chloride or gelatin chloride paper that was produced by The General Aristo Company, formed in 1899 in Jamestown, New York, with George Eastman as treasurer. The cardboard mount was distinctive because the lettering was in green and labeled "Aristo-type." Jamestown was a city with many Swedish immigrants, which may have led to B.G.'s patronage of that product. Later, the Eastman Company purchased the stock of the American Aristotype Co.
"Though a photographer, Gröndal also developed X-rays for the local doctors. The local paper reported: "B.G. Gröndal developed a plate the other day which looked rather queer. It looked like something from a haystack to a map of Hindustan. After we made a few guesses we were told that it was the X-ray photograph of a man's knee taken by Drs. Lagerstrom and Pihlblad."
"On February 24, 1888, the local paper reported that "Mr. Gröndal made several transparencies for the college geological collections last week. This is something that no photographer in Kansas has ever tried before. Most work of that kind is done only in the city of New York. Hurrah for Lindsborg!"
'My father detested tintypes,' wrote his son Bror Leonard. (Bror Leonard, known as Leonard, was the second child who was born in 1889 in Round Rock. The family had returned there for several months where they still owned the studio.) Bror remembers: "Dad used a tintype camera with multiple lenses (four, I believe). After exposure, he developed the ferrotypes in ferrous sulfate, which was dissolved in a 20 to 1 mixture of water and alcohol, somewhat acidulated with acetic and nitric acids. It is probably for that reason, he regarded William Jennings Bryan, a Democratic candidate for the presidency, whose platform included the coinage of silver in a 20 to 1 ratio to gold, as a 'loud-mouthed tin-type.' The tintypes were next fixed in either cyanide or a fairly strong solution of 'hypo' (sodium thiosulfate) followed by thorough washing and forced drying over a wide, flat-wicked kerosene burner. Finally, the tintypes were varnished with a solution of rosin in gasoline, again being force-dried. The highly glossed tintypes were then cut apart, placed in a folder, and handed to the customer. 'Fifty cents, please;!' this left a profit of about 15 cents."
"Photographing the Messiah Chorus before the advent of electricity required considerable work to get it set up. Three stands with powder to light the building had to be set off simultaneously."
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PHOTOGRAHY AS AN ART FORM
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PHOTOGRAHY AS AN ART FORM
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"Photography gradually came to be recognized as an art form. B.G. saw the beauty in the Smoky Valley of central Kansas. 'When the Indians scanned the horizon from elevated points . . . they saw a broad valley . . . over which a mystic haze hung low in autumn and spring, and so they called it the Smoky Valley,' wrote Dr. Emory Lindquist, in his book, Smoky Valley People. He included the decision of Dr. Swensson of the local Bethany College, that in asking Gröndal to come to Lindsborg in 1887 he saw in Gröndal an artist in his calling ' . . .Gröndal. . . throughout his long career showed great loyalty to the college and all of its activities.'
"Northwest of Lindsborg is a chain of sandstone bluffs believed to have been on Coronado's path to find the fabled seven cities of gold. Discovery of a piece of chain mail on one of those hills caused it to be named Coronado Heights. The view from the summit stretches for miles in all directions and was cherished by B. G.
"His work gives evidence to his artist's eye. His landscape studies, such as the composition of daisies and girls on the campus, are evidence of his artistic bent. (His great-grandfather, Per Kraft, Sr., and grandfather Per Kraft, Jr., were noted portrait painters in Sweden. Their works can be seen in the National Gallery in Stockholm.) He had a talent for arranging groups in seemingly natural-not-static poses. B.G.'s advertisement in the March 19, 1912, News-Record reads: 'Photography Is an Art as well as a business with us. We think more of producing an artistic portrait of you than we do of the moderate profit from our work.' "
"Northwest of Lindsborg is a chain of sandstone bluffs believed to have been on Coronado's path to find the fabled seven cities of gold. Discovery of a piece of chain mail on one of those hills caused it to be named Coronado Heights. The view from the summit stretches for miles in all directions and was cherished by B. G.
"His work gives evidence to his artist's eye. His landscape studies, such as the composition of daisies and girls on the campus, are evidence of his artistic bent. (His great-grandfather, Per Kraft, Sr., and grandfather Per Kraft, Jr., were noted portrait painters in Sweden. Their works can be seen in the National Gallery in Stockholm.) He had a talent for arranging groups in seemingly natural-not-static poses. B.G.'s advertisement in the March 19, 1912, News-Record reads: 'Photography Is an Art as well as a business with us. We think more of producing an artistic portrait of you than we do of the moderate profit from our work.' "
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PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
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PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
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"B.G. Gröndal was active in professional organizations. In 1905 he helped organize the Kansas Photographers Club. This was a group of 12 photographers from Kansas and Missouri that met annually for two days of informal professional discussion and fellowship. The photographers took turns hosting the gatherings, on or around January 11, B.G.'s birthday. A groups photograph was traditional. It would be interesting to research the careers of these photographers.
"The earliest record of B.G.'s attendance at a Kansas Professional Photographers Association was in September, 1902, in Emporia. In succeeding years, he was treasurer of the association for four years and then the president for two years. At age 84, in 1939, he was presented a life membership in the Professional Photographers Association of Kansas at their annual meeting in the Lassen Hotel in Wichita, Kansas. C. W. Stevens, president of the organization, said, 'Gröndal has watched the progress of this art since his first interest in photography 70 years ago.' (Wichita Beacon, October 1939).
"Edith, B.G.'s oldest child, accompanied her father to professional meetings, serving as his secretary and assistant when he held an office. One grand time must have been had in 1904 when both Edith and her younger brother Bror Leonard accompanied their father to a state photographers' meeting in Topeka and continued by train to visit the World's Fair in St. Louis. Their names are recorded in the guest book at Sweden's national exhibit, the Swedish Pavilion, which, after a period on the Bethany College campus, was relocated to the grounds of the Old Mill Museum Heritage Square in Lindsborg. It was modeled on the traditional Swedish Manor house by architect Ferdinand Broberg.
"Briefly affiliated with the Photographers Association of America, he could attend only one session. A small red and gold pin displays "P.A. of A.," the acronym for the Photographers Association of America. The year is unknown."
Go HERE to "Through the Lens of B.G. Gröndal: Keeper of His Time"
~ Selections from Bror Gustaf Gröndal's Photography from 1887 to 1945 -- pending
"The earliest record of B.G.'s attendance at a Kansas Professional Photographers Association was in September, 1902, in Emporia. In succeeding years, he was treasurer of the association for four years and then the president for two years. At age 84, in 1939, he was presented a life membership in the Professional Photographers Association of Kansas at their annual meeting in the Lassen Hotel in Wichita, Kansas. C. W. Stevens, president of the organization, said, 'Gröndal has watched the progress of this art since his first interest in photography 70 years ago.' (Wichita Beacon, October 1939).
"Edith, B.G.'s oldest child, accompanied her father to professional meetings, serving as his secretary and assistant when he held an office. One grand time must have been had in 1904 when both Edith and her younger brother Bror Leonard accompanied their father to a state photographers' meeting in Topeka and continued by train to visit the World's Fair in St. Louis. Their names are recorded in the guest book at Sweden's national exhibit, the Swedish Pavilion, which, after a period on the Bethany College campus, was relocated to the grounds of the Old Mill Museum Heritage Square in Lindsborg. It was modeled on the traditional Swedish Manor house by architect Ferdinand Broberg.
"Briefly affiliated with the Photographers Association of America, he could attend only one session. A small red and gold pin displays "P.A. of A.," the acronym for the Photographers Association of America. The year is unknown."
Go HERE to "Through the Lens of B.G. Gröndal: Keeper of His Time"
~ Selections from Bror Gustaf Gröndal's Photography from 1887 to 1945 -- pending
Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy
(1927-2017)
Granddaughter of B.G. Gröndal
(1927-2017)
Granddaughter of B.G. Gröndal
Bror Gustaf Gröndal
(1855-1948)
Lindsborg's Photographer
1887-1945
“Dean of Kansas Photographers”
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The Family of Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy has kindly extended permission to share selections from her
2013 Through the Lens of Bror Gustaf Gröndal: Keeper of His Time in SWEDES.
This "is in a collection of Lindsborg work in the Library of Congress" -- Mrs. Margaret Dahlquist Eddy,
page 105 of Through the Lens of Bror Gustaf Gröndal: Keeper of His Time.
SOURCE: THROUGH THE LENS OF B.G. GRÖNDAL: KEEPER OF HIS TIME
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"Let Us Remember Them"
* * *
Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
* * *
All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated.
Copyright © since October 8, 2015 to Current Year
as indicated on main menu sections of
www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
"Let Us Remember Them"
* * *
Swedes: TheWayTheyWere
~ restoring lost local histories ~
reconnecting past to present
* * *
All color photography throughout Swedes: The Way They Were is by Fran Cochran unless otherwise indicated.
Copyright © since October 8, 2015 to Current Year
as indicated on main menu sections of
www.swedesthewaytheywere.org. All rights reserved.
