Photos show life from back in the 1900s
The glass negatives sat in open boxes in a shed for years. Many had water damage. Some images were completely washed away.
Katie Broer Parr’s father had already developed some in his darkroom, but the rest remained murky, dark images on glass, almost impossible to see.
Today, the scanned and lightly edited photos show people in lace, puffed hair and stiff suits. Some show people mingling in the Collierville Town Square or carriages driving by. One photo shows two barbers sudsing up the hair of two men in the barbershop.
“It’s very thrilling to see,” said Parr, who transformed the photos from glass negatives to digital images and later into a book. “The negative is just all black and murky and it’s hard to tell, but then you get it into an actual crisp, black-and-white photo and you can see the details of their dress and their hair and everything. It’s really a glimpse of the small town Collierville was in 1915 or whenever these photos were taken.”
Elizabeth “Bessie” Dean Parr took the pictures in the early 1900s, and her son gave them to Katie Parr’s father. Katie Parr even printed some of them for an eighth-grade history project.
Around 2006, she returned to her
home of Collierville after living in Atlanta. She began to work on scanning and editing the photos. She did very little work in photoshop on them, just touching up the occasional bit of water damage on a subject's face.
“When I had a little chunk of time I thought it was the perfect project,” Parr said. “Something needed to be done. Nobody had seen these photos. I don't think anybody really remembered that we had them or that there had been a woman photographer on the square. It's just fascinating.”
Parr said she loves so many of the photos. There's the photo of Bessie Dean Parr's husband and his friends with the hunting dogs. The photo of a woman with voluminous hair and an indignant expression on her face. The three dapper gentlemen with cigars. The photo of the town square that seems to be taken from the dentist's window, including the telephone operator in another window.
Bessie Dean Parr was married to J.C. Parr, the town dentist. Her studio was in the back of the dentist's office in the same building that now houses Square Beans Coffee Company. Today, her photos line one of the walls of the coffee shop.
As Katie Parr began to develop the photos, she also began to research the photographer. They know she was born in 1875 in Mississippi and moved to Collierville when she was 15. They believe she went to Bellevue College.
There's a family legend that Bessie Dean Parr's mother didn't approve of her photography because it ruined her hands to work with chemicals to develop the plates — and that wasn't considered ladylike.
Apart from that, they don't know much about her. They know she took photos professionally, taking portraits of people around town in her studio. When Katie Parr first developed the photos, some of the older women in town told her they remembered going up to the studio after school to have their photos taken as children.
“I just wish we knew more about her, but at least we have the photos,” she said.
When Katie Parr began the project, she called Hampton Parr, Bessie Dean Parr's great grandson, to ask whether the camera was still in the family.
The two found the camera still in the back of the dentist's office.
Not long after, Hampton Parr asked her out to a movie. They were married in 2009.
Now, Bessie Dean Parr's camera sits in The Stratton House, a bed and breakfast owned by the couple.
After developing the photos, Katie Parr held an event in her home with the pictures hung on the walls. She invited people from around Collierville, especially those old enough to remember Bessie Dean Parr. One woman showed up with a small print that matched one of the photos Katie Parr had developed. It was of her sister, the woman said, and had been taken by Bessie Dean Parr.
They aren't sure exactly when Bessie Dean Parr stopped taking photos. They believe the studio operated from around 1905-1915.
“Nobody remembered that they (the photos) existed or that Miss Parr had been a photographer,” Katie Parr said. “That was an important part of the project to share it with everyone and make sure they had seen them and knew they existed and could learn about life in their small town back in the day.”
Katherine Burgess covers county government, religion and the suburbs. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-5292799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.