British, 1896-1980
Many family photo albums focus on the activities and growth of children, who would gradually become the centers of family life in the twentieth century. In fact, children are sometimes the occasion for photography itself. A particularly striking example of this tendency is a small album that meticulously records the growth of Ethel Claire "Linne" Lundbeck (1928–2000), from age one to age eighteen. The surprisingly uniform images, taken consistently every year over a span of nearly two decades, were probably compiled by Linne’s mother, Essie Atkinson Lundbeck (1896–1980), who was raised near Bath in an aristocratic English family, known for its artists and album makers. While this album focuses almost exclusively on Linne’s annual growth, it also offers brief glimpses of the Lundbecks’s privileged life at Turleigh House, a Tudor manor in Bradford on Avon, England, and at various European vacation spots. Linne later studied sculpture at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, before settling in California, where she died in August 2000.
