A photo of five babies’ heads among fluffy white clouds in a blue sky hung on the wall out front in the [Porter portrait] studio at 57 Main Street in Houlton.
In between sittings, Porter might be in the spacious main area in the oak rocker readng a Saturday Evening Post or Liberty, while Ina worked in the print room, and Leonard and I were always busy. When the studio door off the second-floor hall opened, making little bells ring, one of us would go out front into the waiting room to greet customers.
The babies-in-the-clouds photo in a wide oak frame hung on the wall toward the far end from the door. Some viewers asked questions without getting answers: How was it done? How did the babies get into the clouds? Were the babies and the blue sky painted? Meanwhile, Leonard and I fantasized about being up there in those clouds.
The photo, at 19-1/2 by 23-1/2 inches, 30-1/2 by 33-1/2 with frame, was clearly a showpiece. When was it made? Long before I was born, but I assumed that Ina had done the painting and tinted the babies, because she hand-colored black-and-white portraits, as well as outdoor scenes.
However, I never heard her say that she did the babies, and if anyone had asked Porter, he would have just smiled, as he did when people asked another question about the picture: Was it one baby in different poses or different babies? He died in 1955 at the age of 70, Ina in 1980 at 80. Any secrets about the “Cloud Fairies,” as the brass plaque on the frame reads, went with them. Rest in Peace.
Then in May, 2005, my niece from Porter’s first family sent me genealogical data and added some photos.
Three of the photos on one page were identified as Emily Robinson Porter Blair, Porter’s first wife. On the bottom left was a head-and-shoulders, on the right a full-length shot of her sitting on a posing stool in the studio. Across the top one photo showed a big picture of babies in clouds on the left and to the right a woman holding a white palette was looking down as she dipped a small brush into the paint on the plate. Her clothing predated the 1920s.
Now I have reclaimed the photo from the framing shop where the paper on the back was replaced and the wood refurbished. Nothing was written on the back of the photo, proving that it had been taken after the baby photos were placed and the painting was done. How all that occurred remains a question.
Byrna Porter Weir was born and grew up in Houlton, where her parents were portrait photographers. She now lives in Rochester, N.Y.
