Fort Payne Boom Days Images by O.W. Chase circa 1889 by John Dersham

It is an honor for me to present twenty nine archival printed silver halide photographic prints to Landmarks of DeKalb County, Inc. This is a gift from myself and family and is an intended contribution to the preservation of our rich history here in Fort Payne. The prints presented here are part of the original 6 ½ x 8 ½ glass plates/negatives photographed by O.W. Chase circa 1889. Mr. Chase was hired to make these images for the purpose of making brochures promoting Fort Payne to New Englanders during our Boom Days. These images now 121 years old, are a blessing to our community and serve as an unsurpassed view backward into our rich history. I want to thank Judy and Joe Brown for entrusting me with these delicate glass negatives, so I could print them in my darkroom.
O.W. Chase was a hired professional photographer using a professional large format view camera. Due to the large size of the negatives, the capture of detail and tonality is still unsurpassed by any professional digital camera today. Only today’s large format cameras with improved film emulsions and sharper lenses could improve the technical quality of O.W. Chase’s body of work.
In the days of O.W. Chase’s photography only trained professionals were doing this work. A little later in the same era George Eastman (Kodak) was introducing the first ever consumer photographic cameras and film. Prior to this time there were no snapshots. This means many small towns like Fort Payne had no photographic history dating as far back as the late 1880’s. We are very fortunate to have had a Boom Days.
The prints in this collection are from twenty nine of O.W. Chase’s collection of an estimated 85 glass plates shot in or around 1889, in Fort Payne.
For the sake of historical preservation I have printed these images using archival printing, processing and mounting processes. I have used silver rich double weight fiber based photographic paper of Chlorobromide formula that appears similar in tonality to the photographic papers of the 1880’s. All of the prints have been Selenium toned which further protects the silver from oxidation. This collection of prints is printed to provide medium to medium soft contrast in order to preserve the delicate details in the highlights and shadows of the scene. In accordance with the archival process used, these images should provide a lasting image for several hundred years.