Pioneer photographer of the Ozarks
About this site...
This Web site provides a gallery for the photography of Calvin Davis and a forum for the writings of Uriel B. Stokes. The works of both men reflect life in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri at the turn of the twentieth century. It offers a unique window on another time and place.
Photographs in the five Calvin Davis galleries came from his original glass negatives. We first made prints from the negatives using a standard photography enlarger/printer and then scanned the prints with a flatbed scanner.
I used Adobe Photoshop 5 for cropping and "tweaking," but that was minimal. Most of the negatives had suffered water damage at one time which caused the perimeter of the photos to look "flaky." I cropped that out and eliminated some scratches and spots. Because the picture quality of most of the photos was so good I made very few adjustments; but as you will see, some are a higher quality than others. I included all.
I know very little about Calvin Davis. He was my grandfather's stepfather, but I don't know when he was born or when he died.
Uriel B. Stokes was my uncle and the step grandson of Calvin Davis. He was born in Christian County, Missouri in 1893 and died in Colorado in 1984. The text of his essays is original as the day he wrote them on his manual typewriter. I edited
obvious errors only.
If you have a comment or question about the Web site, don't hesitate to send a message to me, Rick Stokes.
Thank you and enjoy your visit!