Photography was for a time considered the domain of a select few who could afford it but Kodak democratized the process and made photos available to everyone. That led to a rise in photography studios. Photographers who set up shop in small towns perhaps unwittingly recorded a history of their towns.
Lampasas was fortunate to have two photographers whose combined works illustrate a fair amount of Lampasas’ considerable history. The Keystone Square Museum in Lampasas has works by the two photographers currently on display.
The photographs of Virgil Wooten, whose pictures chronicled everything from a Spring Ho Hayloft Party to the Lampasas Colored School, are a small portion of Wooten’s entire body of work and were donated to the museum by Virgil Wooten’s son, Wade.
Wooten bought his photography studio from Lucile Standard in the 1940s. Standard had bought the studio in 1918. Standard’s granddaughter Judy Smith has put together an exhibit of Standard’s work that includes pictures of her husband, William Standard, with a mule-drawn fire wagon, an early Lampasas polo team and dozens of photos of Lampasas people and places.
Amy McDaniel with the Keystone Museum said Lampasas is fortunate to have access to two photographers who chronicled the history of Lampasas so well.
“Together, these two exhibitions present a rich visual history of Lampasas through images of the people and places that make up the city and county,” she said.
“A single photograph - an image of beauty contestants representing local businesses, taken by Lucile Standard, for example, or the senior prom at the Colored School, taken by Virgil Wooten - speaks volumes in ways that words on a page can not.”
The photos of the old Lampasas Colored School that she alluded to is one the surprises of the Wooten exhibit. The photos are remarkable in that they were taken at a time when many photographers, especially in small towns, would not shoot photos of black or Hispanic subjects.
The photos came without identification but Clementine Walker volunteered her time and memory to identifying the people in the pictures.
“She was able to identify every person,” McDaniel said. “Another thing that was neat was the pictures of the inside of the school. We hadn’t seen any pictures of the inside of the building before we got these photos.”
Though an effort is under way to save the old Lampasas Colored School building, many of the buildings pictured in Wooten’s photos are gone and all but forgotten. That element is more pronounced in Lucile Standard’s photos, which cover the early decades of the 20th Century.
The observer will notice a distinctive tint to many of Mrs. Standard’s photos. Judy Smith said that was intentional on her grandmother’s part.
“She used her talent as an oil painter to tint the photos like this,” she said during a visit to the museum last week. “It adds a unique touch.”
Visitors might notice a picture of the museum that was obviously not taken by Mrs. Standard. It is a picture of Elvis Presley and his guitar. For her family, the guitar is the most significant aspect of the picture.
Ted Standard, Lucile Standard’s son and Mrs. Smith’s uncle, learned leather work from Ray Jones in Lampasas and eventually moved to Memphis, Tennessee where he opened his own shop.
One day a good-looking kid came in off the street and asked Ted Standard to make a leather guitar cover for him. That kid was Elvis Presley.
“He paid for it in installments,” Mrs. Smith said. “A few months later he’s watching ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ and recognized Elvis right away. ‘That’s that kid!’ A few months after that Elvis came into his shop again and asked my uncle to make him some boots. He paid cash that time.”
The Wooten and Standard exhibits are on view at the Keystone Square Museum through Saturday, Oct. 27. The museum is located at 303 S. Western Avenue in downtown Lampasas and is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays or by appointment during the week.
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