Life, 1923-06-07 · page 18 of 44
Life — June 7, 1923 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This comic sketch satirizes the vanity and pretension of early 20th-century portrait photography. A working-class mother (Ma) and daughter (Lutie) visit a photographer to create posed postcard portraits—cheap mass-produced photos meant to impress friends back home in "Blueberry Falls." The humor lies in the gap between authentic identity and staged appearance. Ma insists Lutie pose reading in an Italian Garden setting (to appear cultured), though Lutie has never actually read. The photographer endlessly adjusts Lutie's position, rings, and expression for artificial "naturalness." Ma later suggests false props—a violin Lutie doesn't play, a horse she's never touched—because the "best picture" of their friend Myrtie showed her doing things she never actually did. The satire targets both the photography industry's manipulation and the subjects' eager complicity in self-deception for social status.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Twenty thousand dollars for that! What an idea! Why, it’s marked ‘remnant’,” At the Post Card Photographer’s M A: I want my daughter should be taken into an Eye- talian Garden. Lutie: No, Ma, I want to be took in a lib’ Ma: But i to be readin’-— Lutie: Well, I never was into an Eyetalian Garden, I think I'd look funny. Ma: Well, I think they'll think it funny in Blueberry Falls to see you readin’ in a lib’ry. Lutie: Well, they don’t know but what I’ve taken up readin’, PHoroGRAPHER: You don’t need to take it up, you can have the book layin’ careless beside you, and lookin’ off. Ma: Yes, Lutie, it’s natural for you to be lookin’ off—I always liked you leanin’ on that pillar with your diplomer lookin’ off. PuHotoGRAPHER (letting down a curtain with garden scene behind Lutie and laying a book on a rus- tic seat beside her) : Now place the n't natural for you By Beatrice Herford right hand on the back of the bench, so— Ma: If your other hand ain't a-goin’ to show, Lutie, I’d put your rings onto that one. Lutie (changing the Where’ll I look? PHoroGRarHER: Just look over at the coffee pot. (Lutie casts a@ far-away look at an agate coffee pot onak e, Ma: PHOTOGRAPT a sweet expression. Ma: She don’t use no sugar in it either. PuotocrarHer: I’d cross the hand over that one—(Lutie changes the rings again, without changing her expression.) Now keep your eyes steady, head down a little more, not quite so much, left shoulder up a bit, lift the chin a trifle, not quite so much, a little more, that’s it, now turn the head just a mite, and keep the eyes the same, a little brighter, just a little rings): about it. That gives you brighter, now keep your eyes on the coffee pot and don't stir! That's fine! (Click.) (They all relax and give sighs of relicf.) PxHoroGRaPuER: That had ought- er be good. Ma: I'd kind of like to see you taken with somethin’ in your hand, a violin would look cute—I think it’s nice to be taken doin’ some- thin’ even if it’s somethin’ you don’t never do—Don’t you remem- ber the best picture Myrtie ever had, she was standin’ by a horse, it was the image of her. and she wasn’t never onto one in her life. PHotToGRAPHER: How about a watering can? Ma: She never had no luck with plants. PHoToGRAPHER: We'll take one with the head alone—just be seated. Ma: I ain’t never seen your head without the rest of you, (Continued on page 36) comicbooks.com