Piecing Together North Dakota`s Oldest Photos
|  Video
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| Marie Arceo |
| 11/4/2009 |
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| We use the internet to get all kinds of information. Some use it for research, while others use it to make purchases. For one woman in Bismarck, it`s a tool that`s bringing life to her business. Her photo gallery houses some of the state`s oldest photos, but it`s not always what`s on the walls that`s getting all the attention. It`s the stories behind them and her goal to piece together that missing information. They say a picture is worth a thousand words but not even words can measure the worth of these old photos. "I ended up looking in my book here and I found a 1937 picture of the police department. I found him," said Claudia Masseth, co-owner of Magic Photo Art in Bismarck. Claudia Masseth and her husband opened Magic Photo Art Gallery in downtown Bismarck 25 years ago. It was there in the basement that she found more than 100 boxes of negatives that belonged to Mason Owens, a former executive director for Disney. They bought the rights to those negatives and ones from other North Dakota photographers. She and her husband have spent the last two decades restoring them. "When you get the history behind it, it`s even more rare," said Masseth. Some of these photos date back to the 1930s and are too old for most people to recognize the people and events in the photos. So Claudia does her research. Through old yearbooks, and now, even the internet to piece together photos with its stories. "I`ve got negatives where a man is holding a newspaper and if I Google that newspaper, and if I Google that headline in, a date comes up. It`s truly amazing," she said. But there`s no better resource than the people themselves. Like this picture of five young girls at a Bismarck High School football game. "A gal came in and she said `that`s me`," said Masseth. Claudia keeps track of any information that she finds on her pictures, with hopes of getting as much information about the pictures as possible. "It gives our collection more background, it gives the family of the man something, too." Because they`re more than just places and faces. They`re real people with real stories. |
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