09/27/2026
An unidentified young girl, photographed sometime around 1910–1915.
She sits formally posed in a studio chair, dressed in a sailor-style dress, white stockings and enormous hair bows — looking just slightly away from the camera.
And then there’s the flower.
Against an entirely black-and-white portrait, a single bloom in her lap was carefully hand-colored a brilliant red. More than a century later, it still commands the photograph.
The image remains on its original embossed presentation mount, worn at the edges and pierced where someone once hung it on a wall. No photographer’s mark. No name. No location.
We don’t know who she was.
But somebody thought this photograph important enough to display — and somebody took the extra care to make certain that flower was red.
African American studio portrait with hand coloring, c. 1910–1915.
A little mystery that survived.
