When he was a lad growing up in 1930s Iola, Max Snodgrass was as hip with the day’s technology as those are today with their iPods, Smart phones and digital cameras.
Back then, Snodgrass toted around a little camera that used 127 film.
His early day photos of Iola will be presented in the show “A View of Iola: 1925 to 1990” at 7 p.m. Monday in the Creitz Recital Hall of the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
The slide show will be of more than 160 pictures of Iola buildings with narration. The event is part of Iola’s observation of the Kansas sesquicentennial, and one of several scheduled here next week.
A handful of the slides were made from negatives of the Ross Arbuckle collection and others from the early days of Iola’s Lehigh Portland Cement Co. plant. Most, though, are of his own making.
SNODGRASS started accumulating his vast collection of photographs and slides while serving with an Army engineer unit in the Korean War, 1952-53.
“They were personal photos, nothing to do with the military,” he said.
After his discharge, Snodgrass returned to Iola and began work as an accountant in 1955. Eventually the firm became Snodgrass, Dunlap and Co., which today is Jarred, Gilmore and Phillips, PA, 16 E. Jackson Ave.
Snodgrass, 81, continues to keep office hours.
Back in Iola, Snodgrass’ love of photography and cameras grew.
“I’ve always taken photos of whatever struck my fancy,” he said, which at some point included Iola businesses.
He has detailed disaster aftermath, such as when a 1986 fire hit the west side of the square destroying Hixon Office Supply, John Foust’s law office, Perry’s Restaurant and China Palace.
He also has slides of the fire that took two buildings a block north on Washington Avenue in a mid-winter blaze in the late 1940s.
His slide collection contains more than 8,000 frames, most in trays. Many are personal treasures, which have grown with his family.
“We (he and wife Bernedine) have four children, their spouses, 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren,” he said. “I’ve had lots of opportunities to take photos of them and their activities.”
Appropriately, on his 80th birthday his family put together a large montage of images, all featuring him.
HIS CAMERA collection is something else.
“I don’t know exactly how I got started, other than I always kept the camera I had when I got a new one,” he said.
Once the collecting bug bit, Snodgrass made a point to drop by garage sales and auctions, where he’d pick up older cameras. When friends became aware of his hobby, they also handed off cameras when they purchased a replacement.
Today, he has more the 230, as well as accessories and film.
His favorite is the Kodak Retina series. He also has some unusual specimens, such as a Japanese military aerial camera whose massive size dominates the others.
Snodgrass has conceded to technology and now uses a digital camera, although he’s of the belief that digital images aren’t as crisp or vivid as those produced for years on Kodachrome film.
