CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/13/2015

Making Pictures: Three for a Dime

"One Saturday morning in the mid-1930s, Mancy Massengill, a wife and mother of three, saw people having their pictures made in a dime store photo booth in Batesville, Arkansas. According to her son Lance, 'she watched close, and got the name off the camera, then wrote to the company and ordered the lens. She got the money for that by taking about two-dozen pullets in for sale.' Her husband, Jim, built a box to house the lens and outfitted a trailer to create a mobile photography studio. On weekends, they would set up in little towns across the state and make pictures, three for a dime… The Massengill family photographs can be playful, serious, strange, and at times, haunting." So begins Phillip March Jones' introduction to Making Pictures: Three for a Dime Dust-to-Digital's wonderful collection of unattributed family photographs made by the itinerant Massengill family throughout the 1930s and 40s. Featured photograph is of Thelma Massengill.