MOUNT VERNON — Once a month, we feature a pair of vintage cabinet card photographs taken in Knox County which do not have names identifying the people in the pictures. They were all taken by photographers who had studios in Mount Vernon. Cabinet cards were a popular format for sharing photos in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
We continue this month with another pair of photographs taken by John Burkholder, who got his start in Mount Vernon before moving on to Bellville, Mansfield, and finally Toledo. He was clearly an accomplished photographer who made it his lifelong career.
The detail in one of these pictures, however, stands out to the degree that one must wonder if Burkholder was in the habit of “touching up” his photographic negatives to enhance detail. Though one can make out some details on the floral tie the young man is wearing in one of the pictures, the lines of his combed hair seem clearer than anything else in the picture.
