Young man with a fake fence
What it is:
Cabinet card measuring approx. 4.25 x 6.5 inches.
What I know about it:
Photographer is C. R. Hollis of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Otherwise undated and unidentified.
Comments:
The fence is a little daffy to me, albeit typical of “outdoorsy” studio portraits. (I have others with things like fake boulders.) But mostly I’m struck by this guy’s outfit. When I look at the fashions of different eras and consider them odd, I sometimes feel that running them through the filter of my modern tastes must amount to a sort of prejudice. Yet I look at this guy’s ensemble and can’t help wondering if it was ever in style. I gather that boldly patterned fabrics were more common on men’s clothes then than today (and I wonder what this suit looked like in color). But the sleeves strike me as too short. The jacket hangs on him almost like a capelet, making him look more pear-shaped than he probably is. And am I wrong in thinking that it is missing at least one button? The more I look at this photo, the more I think he’s probably younger than I initially thought, and maybe the suit is a hand-me-down, purchased or made for somebody else’s body.
Pics of Then 
Then there is the plastered down hair, parted in the middle. Poor kid!