No matter where you start in this picture, the faces all turned in the same direction lead your eye to the speaker at the far left who was once the focal point of this composition. However, sixty years in storage at less-than-optimum conditions have degraded the edges so much that the speaker has all but disappeared making this picture now merely a disorganized crowd scene.
There are still a lot of fun "discoveries" in it - like the child at the bottom of the picture who has turned to see what the photographer is doing. The ladys' hats are retro and cool, but the main attraction of this old picture is the mystery.
From the size of the crowd, I would guess this was a major event back in the late 40s or early 50s, but it's now forgotten. Very few people in this picture are still alive, but, if you are one of the attendees, please leave a comment telling the rest of us where this dinner took place and what happened there.
The speaker is there. He is fuzzy, but if you look closely you can see a man standing in front of a microphone right on the very edge of the photo. I don't think it looks like a disorganized crowd at all. Everyone is seated and listening intently to the speaker. I'm going to guess that its a school gym, or the UCM campus or a church. The largest school at that time was Martin Warren, but I don't think that is not the MW dining room. I think the building is brand new. The ceiling and lighting has really caught my attention. It looks very modern. That leaves a church, or UCM campus.
ReplyDeleteEveryone is dressed up and there are table cloths, so this is a formal event.
I didn't mean that the crowd was disorganized. I meant that, without an obvious focal point, the composition of the picture had dissolved into a disorganized scene.
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