Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our Immigrant Past

If you've never heard of photo-ceramic portraits as an art form, it's small wonder. Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our Immigrant Past is the first book ever published to explore this medium specifically as it pertains to memorial markers. Though this technology has been around for one hundred years, only Forgotten Faces has drawn attention to its fragile nature - and our need to preserve it.

Title: Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our Immigrant Past
Author: Ronald Horne
Publisher: Personal Genesis Publishing
ISBN: 0974739529

Pro:

Points to relevancy of photo-ceramic portraits as an art form

One entire chapter is devoted to the mechanics of the process itself

Extensive use of photography keeps reader's interest engaged

Con:

Almost exclusively specific to California cemeteries

The memorial photos often beg for background information on their subjects

Description:

A highly original look at U.S. immigrants in the early 20th-century

Five photo galleries contain over 350 examples of photo-ceramic memorial portraits

The only reference of its kind

The first portrait that engaged the author, Ron Horne's, attention, does the same to the readers of his book Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our Immigrant Past. Horne had been photographing architectural details in Colma, California's Holy Cross Cemetery, when the thoughtful gaze of eleven-year-old Louise Bajada caught his eye. Louise was interred in 1928, but her portrait, on her memorial marker, demanded a closer look.

Captivated by the ceramic portraits he continued to seek out, and stymied by lack of research on this unique medium, Horne began the journey of discovery that came to be chronicled in Forgotten Faces.

Throughout the book's 192 pages that which most compels the reader's attention are the photographed faces themselves. To describe the portraits as "haunting" would be taking the easy adjective out. The subjects of the memorial portraits (most of which were shot straight-on, with the sitter staring directly into the camera) draw the viewer in and beg him or her to demand more information about the deceased. The markers that depict young children - and there are many of these - are especially forcible visions.

Chapter Four delves into the history and technology of photo-ceramic portraiture. Though much of the process is proprietary, Horne does an admirable job of explaining how, exactly, the process can produce an object capable of withstanding the elements for many decades. Perhaps more importantly, he explains how inferior results were (and continue to be) achieved, thus explaining the "mixed results" one sees while exploring these memorial portraits.

It's also enlightening to note, while viewing the image galleries in the book, what an egalitarian effect photography had on us all as a society. The faces portrayed come primarily from immigrant families of many differing nationalities, races and economic classes. While the photo-ceramic portraits never came cheaply, they were far more within the means of bereaved relatives than, say, an elaborately carved monument.

My only criticisms are minor. Personal preference would have Forgotten Faces include extensive biographical information on each of the (over 350) faces depicted. Even if this background material was readily available - which is certainly not the case - the resultant book would likely number over one-thousand pages and weigh many pounds.

Secondly, this book concentrates on cemeteries in one region of California. While this is a genealogist's dream if one's ancestors settled in the region, there are quite a few other States in the Union that saw their fair share of immigrant families. Happily, Forgotten Faces is but the first volume of a planned series.

The first reference of its kind, Forgotten Faces: A Window Into Our Immigrant Past is recommended reading for art historians seeking information on enamel portraiture, those who take an interest in threatened and/or vanishing art mediums and Americans with immigrant roots. The latter group includes most of us who claim United States citizenship.