W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #pressprints, #unknownphotographer, #mrsepymjones, #worthypictures, #thewhowhatandwhere, #powerofphotography

Here is place to start a conversation, with an unattributed press print of “Mrs. E. Pym Jones," stamped on the back as “Received Examiner Reference Library Nov. 2, 1962” with a small clipping as it was published.  There she is identified simply with “… at inquest” underneath.   The original description on e-Bay included a headline that she is the “wife of socialite embezzler” but Google yields tantalizingly little beyond that.  The online collection for the State of California has 10 pictures of Mr. and Mrs Jones.  This intrigues me only slightly and not enough to continue the search.  It tells me that the case at some point had size and notoriety, the photograph alone is of interest.  The most salient part of this musing is the way it engages my imagination today.  

Who was Mrs. E. Pym Jones?  She is patrician looking and well coiffed, for the period, toting a mink stole over her arm, seeking some sort of anonymity behind her dark glasses.  That’s fun.  So are the grease pencil editing crop lines and the added contrast from shading the background and whitening the collar line to make the face pop.  It’s possible that Mrs. Jones’ dark glasses have been slightly enhanced.   So much for photo credibility.  You can see the fur in the original larger print which hasn’t been cropped for publication.  Her lawyer or whomever is following her in to or out of what we can surmise is the courthouse.  He has been X’ed out.   

The print has been inexpertly trimmed to approximately 10 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches, and it has been handled just enough to give the whole photograph a sweetly worn object quality.  It is in all respects unique.

Back to the Mrs. EPJ.  I love her disdain, her refusal to be engaged.  She is the blank slate on which we can write our own story.  I know this lady, entitled, cowed here possibly by her social standing assaulted by her husband’s misadventures.  She is now challenged by the threat of losing everything — money, dignity, and status.   It is impossible to read the scale of her indignation or rage.  Is she able to rise up and deal with all of this?  

Her seeming hauteur and the bad lipstick job don’t do her any favors. She is basically a paparazzi victim.  

The more I look at this, the more I enjoy it.

It takes me down memory lane to the tale of my maternal grandmother whose sense of entitlement was constantly challenged by the real world.  She got by nonetheless.  There is one of those family legends about her that comes tumbling back, about her taking a black man’s hat after an argument so he wouldn’t walk out of her household.  She was white.  She and my grandfather were wealthy enough to retain a couple, Joe and Josephine, for years and years.  He drove my grandfather, and she cooked.   It is remarkable to me that the privileged couple — my grandparents —was one generation from abject poverty, and in her misguidedness, Nana seemed to believe that a man would not reasonably travel the streets of Miami Beach without his hat.  After she had had words with Joe and taken his hat, Joe took my father’s hat and left anyway.  That was the story passed down.

I offer this digression as a demonstration how an anonymous photograph can offer up such bounty of associations.  

Very often the value of unauthored photograph free of its actual context is substantial,.  We don’t need the who, what and where.  The image and the object have full life as is, such is the power of photography.

©2018/2021

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