Historic Hood River
Rufus Sumner
7-5-2016
Notes
The subject of this well-posed cabinet card is Rufus Sumner. It looks like the image was taken at a studio in Minnesota. I can imagine the photographer giving poor Rufus directions to get him into that uncomfortable position.
Notes indicate Rufus came to Hood River in 1902.
Charlott
Look at those little high top button shoes. Bet those were wool socks, warm in the winter and hot in the summer. Very nicely dressed though.
Couldn’t you just see a little boy dressed like this today.
Judy
He would have on a baseball hat backwards & the pants pulled down really low. 😂
Lynn Orr
What a fantastic portrait of little Rufus Sumner! In spite of uncomfortable, confining clothes, this young boy exudes a relaxed sense of ease and self-composure. In fact the photographer has beautifully transferred the vocabulary of large-scale formal portrait painting to the more diminutive field of photography. The child is posed like so many self-possessed 18th-century aristocrats depicted in the portraits of Gainsborough and other European masters. The photographer of this elegant image completely understood and artfully manipulated the elements of composition, lighting, and staging characteristic of ‘high’ academic art. I wish we knew who he was!
charlott
Sadly so many photos of that era were "staged" thus not seeing the real person. Photos of older people always look so sad, but the primary reason for that look and never a small, is loss of teeth.
L.E.
Today’s generation would have trouble posing this long without checking their cell phone.
Adding to the list Judy…he would be taking a selfie.
Records indicate Rufus was born in Iowa in 1903. At age 7, in 1910, Rufus and his family are living in HR.
In a HR high school play production, Rufus plays the part of "Jim Ryker, the Lawyer", which seems fitting for this photo.
Jerry Larsen
In 1966, Rufus was working for Pacific Northwest Bell as a college recruiter (unless this is a different Rufus Sumner from Hood River, which is unlikely). He and my mother Doris Davenport, who grew up in Hood River, knew each other. I finished my time as a naval officer in 1966, and Rufus recruited me to enter the PNB management program. I accepted, since I really wanted to come back to Portland where I was born and raised, and ended up retiring from AT&T in 1989. He was a really persistent recruiter, and an extremely good salesman/spokesman for PNB.