Photos Posts

Selective Focus: Signs

This week, Portia Johnson and Cheryl Reitan provide thoughts and images regarding the often homemade signs around town supporting Black Lives Matter.

PJ CR: In Duluth, many of the signs arrived soon after George Floyd was murdered but new ones crop up from time to time. They appear on residential streets and throughfares. Most of them say, “Black Lives Matter,” but there are other words too, “No peace, no justice,” the chilling, “I Can’t Breathe,” and others.

The message appears, often hand painted and imperfect but always betraying a fierce determination. The signs make people look. They say, “this is important, Black lives matter.”

Potential Visit Duluth Campaign

Postcard from Jay Cooke State Park

This undated postcard from Gallagher’s Studio of Photography shows a waterfall and the famous swinging bridge on the St. Louis River at Jay Cooke State Park.

Selective Focus: UMD Bathroom Reviews

Students and faculty may not be on UMD’s campus for a few more weeks due to Coronavirus concerns, but you can enjoy a virtual tour thanks to the UMD Bathroom Reviews Instagram account.

Sights I saw swimming less than 10 feet deep off the Lakewalk


 

Mystery Photo #121: Buggy Boys

A recurring source of confusion in the Mystery Photo series is whether particular images that share the stamp of the Post Card Shop in Minneapolis and the Penny Arcade in Duluth were shot in Minneapolis or Duluth. Here is another such image.

Dank Lake Superior Bull Shark Memes

Duluth Eye Candy: An Aerial Voyage

Why we live here.

Discover all-new views of our home in this series of my favorite drone footage shot in 2020.

So Good to Be Home

I miss Duluth!!! After spending 10 years here, my job relocated me to Knoxville, Tenn. This week I was in town for a business trip when a colleague invited me to go wakesurfing on “The Big Lake.” I steeled myself for the inevitable shock of getting into the lake, but I jumped into the real shock of 70-degree water in the bay!

Lake Superior, clear sky, 80 degrees, and a boat full of fantastic friends had me feeling the loss of moving away from Duluth. The end of the evening rolled in and it was time to go home, except I knew I needed that one picture to capture the moment. It was a Perfect Duluth Day! Can’t wait to be back.

Upset Duluth: Postal Plight Edition

Here’s the latest addition to PDD’s ongoing “Upset Duluth” series, in which we feature Duluth News Tribune photos of people who are upset.

Story link: Plight of Postal Service concerns Duluth customers

And don’t forget to check out the ever-expanding Upset Duluth Gallery.

Fish Cam: In the Trench

 

15 feet deep, 75 feet off shore. I’ve seen loons hunting here so I’ve staked it out…

Mystery Photo: Another from Cook Ely

This image from the Ely Studio of Duluth comes to Perfect Duluth Day via Neal Eisenberg, a native Duluthian.

Selective Focus: Rainbow Over Lake Superior, Again

We’ll get tired of it when you get tired of it.

Steamer Christopher Columbus at Duluth

The Library of Congress captions this image “Steamer Christopher Columbus from Duluth passing industrial buildings,” and dates it “between 1900 and 1915.”

The SS Christopher Columbus was the longest whaleback ship ever built and the only one outfitted to serve as a passenger steamer — the rest were cargo barges. It was built by American Steel Barge Company in Superior and was in service from 1893 to 1933.

Mystery Photos #118 and #119: Gals at H. Mathieson Studio

Many early studio photographers around Duluth printed their photographs on flowery pre-printed cabinet cards, often with their names prominently displayed. Often the name of the person photographed is lost to history, but we can easily locate the photographer in the records more than 100 years later.