The attached photo is giving me some real trouble!

Can anyone figure out what is going on with this woman's left hand? Is she perhaps wearing a black glove? How would you handle restoring this?

My initial thought is to try to make this area mostly black and maybe blur it to draw less attention to it.

Other suggestions?

Thanks!
--Leigh Anne

Do you know anything about this woman? Maybe a relative can give you some info. The bend of her elbow doesn't look normal to me and when magnified I see bits of her waistline but nothing to indicate a hand or fore arm. Now I'm making a big leap here but is it possible she doesn't have an arm??? Plus you can see the triangle space just under the arm pit and it gives a hint to what I think my be a missing appendage. That sleeve almost appears to be folded back and tacked. When I first saw it my thought was what's wrong with her arm not where is her hand. It's just an educated guess on my part and not much help for you when you have to deal with something there. You could add a fore arm and hand from somewhere else but I would question the owners of the picture about the woman first.
DJ

Yes, I might have to resort to asking for more info. However, I'm doing the restoration as a surprise Christmas gift for my boyfriend's mother (the woman pictured is his great grandmother) and I'd hate to ruin the surprise! I might have to workaround it for now, then change it later if I find out some new family info...

--Leigh Anne

DJ is right, the only other thing I can think of is that she has her arm bent across her back - this wouldn't be a normal pose for back then I don't think.

:D Nothing like being caught between a rock and a hard place huh? Perhaps your boyfriend can ask other members of the family for you. You have a good idea to fix it one way and then have a seperate removeable layer for the added arm. Tough call and I don't envy your position. I hope you will share the results of the suprise with us. Curious to find out if there's an arm or not. It sure looks funny though doesn't it? :)
DJ

The hand is behind her back. Try inverting the image; you can see the crease in the sleeve going down and under. The arm disappears behind her back.

I agree with Trimoon and Chiquita - it looks like her arm is bent behind her, but whose hand is the little girl holding on to??

It looks like there is a man's hand there - maybe your inquiries will uncover some family drama :)

Margaret

I could be wrong, but it looks to me like her arm is in front and she's wearing a glove.
The strongest evidence to support this is a shadow under her left arm that travels down her hip. This shadow appears to go much too far down her hip if her arm was behind her. Try putting your own arm behind your back, as you may guess it is in the picture and look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if the shadow for that arm, even with a poofy sleeve, would appear so low and long.
Now put your arm in front of your body and ask yourself the same thing... can the shadow appear on the hip, considering the lighting in the picture, etc. I believe it could, but not if the arm was behind her.
Furthermore, the thing that may be her hand with the glove at her belly has the right lighting to establish potentially that it is a glove, her hand lightly fisted, back of hand towards sky, and, whatever it is, hand or not, the reflection reinforces the strength of the shadow on her hip if her arm were in front, not behind.
Lastly, in a dignified, formal pose such as this, why would the woman have her hand behind her back?
I could be wrong.
M

Hi Leigh Anne...

You might consider some digital surgery and creative cropping to draw attention away from the distraction.

Do get rid of Uncle Fester's big hand around the little girls' waist, while you're at it!

This is a quick hack to give you an idea.

I see you're from Portland... Go Blazers (they whipped Golden State in a preseason game by 24 Wed. night)

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Mig:

RE: "In a dignified, formal pose such as this, why would the woman have her hand behind her back?"

To hid the gin and tonic, perhaps? :D

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~DannyR~

I think I agree with DJ about the woman having no forearm. I think Mig's shadow is caused by the sleeve of the dress being tucked into the waistband.

If I step back from the pic and look at it, I can see nothing to guide my eye to a forearm/hand.

Beautiful woman though.

I've been looking at this pic for quite some time. I don't think her arm is behind her back as it would be a very unusual pose for the period as Chiquitita
said. It's very hard to tell where exactly it goes but I would have to say either she didn't have a forarm or she has it behind her back, but why she would pose like that beats me. So the only logical conclusion I can make is the same as DJ, I can't see any forarm.

I would agree that there seems to be no hand in the picture. However, given the era this picture was taken I don't think that they would immortalize a lost hand unless it was a badge of honor. I think they would at least hide or camouflage a lost hand.
My recommendation would be to crop the picture and just focus on the upper torso with a vignette.

I say it’s behind her back. However it could be in her pocket; this is a very common pose for the period.

My subjective vote goes with the behind the back sentiment.

I believe that the pose is 100% appropriate since the lady is apparently cropped out of a larger composition wherein the child is the center of the arrangement (sitting on dad's lap?) and the lady is maternally standing behind on the opposite side of dad.

I think the back/front confusion comes about from the angle of the wrinkle/crease-line in the waist area of the lady's dress that seems to suggest that the arm is continuing in front of the torso. If you ignore that crease, the arm appears to go naturally behind the torso.

This is a difficult one to tell. Please let us know what the answer ends up being. For now, I played around cloning the nearby pixels to see if they would give a clue. The arm could be behind her back, but I just don't know.

~T

I go with the theory that the woman has half an arm. I reason is that the image apears as if the top of the womans arm is pointing forward, if the womans arm is behind her I think it looks disjointed. I don't particually know anything about the period and I think the only people that can really answer the question are the womans family.

Good luck with your restoration
Clare

I can't tell for sure either, but my FIRST impression was that she had a gloved hand in front of her waist. After reading other's impressions, I'm torn between various views. After looking at a number of old photos, it seems to me more likely to see a woman with her hand holding something small (an invitation card, or a small book?) in front of her, wearing gloves.

Since it is not an easy image to figure out, I think you either have to obtain more information from the family without tipping your secret about restoring the photo (will the family even know much about her, though?), or restore it based on whichever position you finally decide makes sense to you.

If you do find out the facts about her arm, and the pose, please let us know!

Thanks for all the responses!

I cropped the picture before posting originally, but I should have just posted the entire picture. I now realize that this is important, as some people have mentioned, since the period of the photo might tell you something about how people might be posed. And, it is also important since I asked advice on how to restore this. I don't want to do any major cropping since the border of this photo seems to add to much of it's character.

So, FYI, attached is the original photo.

--Leigh Anne

I am SO happy that you have the entire photo - and thanks for sharing it. Perhaps this will help solidify the various opinions?

The reason you rarely see people smile in those old photos was because of the time it took to take the picture most people couldn't hold a smile that long and their faces would appear blurred. Now think about how long you could have held your arm behind your back at that upward angle. That's why I didn't think it was behind her.

If nothing else, Leigh Anne, you've sure gave us all a fun mystery to try and help you solve. I think we are all wanting to know if anyone can answer this mystery. :) That is a beautiful photo and I think it will be a wonderful present no matter how you deal with the arm. :) You could pull a sneaky trick and make it look as if it's behind the person and if there is no arm then you can't really tell if you made it look hidden behind her. Just a thought. :)
DJ

Here is a sample photo with a lady poising with her hand behind her back.

The reason I suggested, that her arm was behind her back was, one I can see it behind her back, two, if you notice in these photos there is always a stand, table, or a pole to help steady a person standing because of the long exposure time used in taking the photo.

One example I can use for this argument is being here in the south, a photography firm out or Macon, GA produced a lot of photographs from that period. In almost all the photographs that have come across my desk, they all seem to have the same stand or table in a lot of the photographs with the same background. From what my mother told me, is that this photographer hired a group of photographers to travel around the South and do family portraits. It would be kind of like the circus coming to town each year; the town would get advanced notice when the photographer was to be there. Everyone would dress up in his or her finery; sometimes he would travel out to the farm and take the family photograph.

I have several series of photographs taken during a family’s life together from wedding day to burial and all that goes in between taken yearly. Again, the overall theme would sometimes be the same sofa, chair, or lamp. Sometimes the background would be used over and over again until was tattered. I have the privilege of owning photographs of my grandparents and their children, my mother as an infant all the way up until high school, and I have a photograph of my great grandmother, just before she died holding the family Bible, that I now own, all these were taken by the same company out of Macon, GA.

But back to the point that I am trying to make, no one can stand for very long without moving or swaying, so they always gave them a stand or a table to lean up against. Sometimes it would be under a dress and up the back to steady them. But more often, the man or woman would hold the stand (by the way, was more like a short hat stand or umbrella stand) from behind the back; it works. Also one note, if you look closely you will see the eyes have been hand painted by the photographer due to the long exposure time and the subject would always blink and blur the image.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed in a modern photograph there are approximately 300 DPI of information available. In the old tintypes there’s anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 DPI of information.

Okay, anyway, I’ve said enough.

Steve

Steve, I figured that she might be using her right hand to steady herself on the back of her husband's chair. What do you see in the lady's front area - from waist to bust? Folds of dress/dress decoration/nothing in particular/etc.?

I switched to CMYK and looked at the black channel. This is what I "think" I saw...

Ahhhh, isn't perception a wonderful thing....?? :D

Perhaps she's holding part of the bassinet from the tintype baby??!! Otherwise I think Danny's onto something.
Debbie:D

You guys are great! Thanks so much. This has been a very informative (and entertaining) thread :-)

I'm going to work on the assumption that she has her hand behind her back. I'll post my final results when I'm done.

--Leigh Anne

Well I did some testing with lighting effects and I think there is an arm in front. The lay of the dress looks as if something is in front of it. The lines of the body go under something. On omni lighting, the front darkens in an object sort of way. Also, try to dodge that black lump. Everything around it dodges out, but the lump remains.
Debbie

I thought I replied to this thread earlier today, but I don't see it. This is a tough one. Can anyone estimate the date of the photograph with any confidence? If this was a gelatin based negative, I wonder if the exposure time would be something to be concerned with. Gelatin based emulsions, if I'm not mistaken, provided fast exposure times, as compared with collodion, which also became faster with time. I'm looking at the little girl's hands and face, and they do not appear to be significantly blurred. So maybe movement wasn't a thing to be *too* concerned with.

Looking at the sleeve, it appears to me that if the arm was in back of the woman, it would be at a very uncomfortable angle, with the hand being held higher than the elbow. I don't think that's likely. My first impression was the same as DJ's, and I'm not yet convinced that it's wrong. I hope someone can shed some light on this because it is a very interesting puzzle.

Ed

Leigh Anne did you ever find her arm?
Debbie

Piping in very late on this thread. (It started while I was on "vacation" - it's in quotes b/c it's a story in itself.) I just have to add my impression though - what a fascinating mystery!

A few years ago I went through training to become a massage therapist. I spent a lot of time observing postures and analyzing what muscles might be involved in unbalanced postures. My first impression when I looked at this photo was "what's wrong with her arm?" (Same as DJ and others.) It just doesn't look like a natural position to me - especially if I think about her arm being behind her back. I think that someone said it looks like she's disjointed if her arm is behind her. I agree. It looks to me as though her elbow is slightly forward from her shoulder, thus making it almost impossible for her hand to be behind her.

However, IF her hand is in front, then where is it? If I ignore the position of the elbow, it looks like the hand would be in the damaged area, since I can't see it anywhere else in the photo. But if the elbow is slightly forward from the shoulder (like I think it is), then the hand should be at least to the midline of the body. Since I don't see it there, I agree with the hypothesis that she doesn't have one.

Leigh Anne, I'd love to know if you find out what the real story is!

Good luck,
Jeanie

I have two photos from the same time period and they both show women with their arm held in a similar position.

i presume it was a common pose for the era.

sjm,
In your photos, is the hand in front or back? Any chance you could share one of them so we can see too?
Jeanie

here they are.

lady B seems to have more of a bend at the elbow than lady A.

To me -- the bend of the elbow in the original looks quite different than that shown in sjm's photos...

I just wanted to say thanks again for all the replies! I'm sorry that I don't have any answer to the riddle yet (of whether the woman was missing an arm). At this point, I'm going to finish the restoration as if her arm was behind her back, then possibly re-do it later. I will definitely let you guys know what I find out.

--Leigh Anne

I agree CJ. On the original, you can see a good part of the sleeve below the elbow, and that makes it look as though the hand would be higher than the elbow. Very uncomfortable if behind the back. Leigh Ann, you know we're all dying to hear the truth. :)

Ed

Thanks sjm! I have to agree with CJ though. The bends in the elbows look much different than the elbow in Leigh Anne's photo.

Such intrigue... ;)

Jeanie

Hi
Just came across this thread and I'm curious as to if anyone solved the mystery of the apparently absent hand.

Looked through a few period fashion books and the "pose du jour" to show off the leg a mutton sleeves appeared to be one arm hanging relatively straight by the side and the other almost forming a right angle to the waistline with the hand hanging straight down in front of the gown. Also most of the ladies wore gloves in formal pictures. I agree that the hand if in front may have been in the folds of the skirt but in this case the skirt appeared to be tailored.

Did not come across any with the hand behind the back although it seems that way in the picture.

Anyway, I too did all sorts of things both in PS as well as placing my arm in different positions in front of the mirror and can't come to any "beyond a reasonable doubt" conclusion.

Will keep trying though because I think the answer has to be in the picture somewhere.




Paulette

I still can't come up with anything better than the blob in my previous post. I still think that's her arm, although badly damaged.
Deb