Great pick-up on the Ruth, Ben. Any idea whether the dark clouds behind Ruth appear on the negative? I would assume it was one of Burke's tricks to augment Ruth's silhouette. Very cool.
Mike, I LOVE that shot of Minnie. It would also make a killer painting!
I bought this one a few years ago for a steal. Well, sort of.
Since it has the unfortunate crack basically running through Ruth's face, I don't think anyone even wanted to touch it. But, I figured that in order to do a painting of it, all I would have to do is reconstruct his face using any of the 1000s of photographs of the great man. Granted, it doesn't 'fix' the original, but I guess that wasn't a huge concern for me.
So, I ended up only paying $100, which may seem like a lot for something so damaged, but I definitely thought it was worth the money in order to make a cool painting of a moment that few have ever seen before.
Graig