Photos Posts

Selective Focus: Kitties

From household pets to wildcats, a look at Duluth-area kitty cats via Instagram.

The Slice: Photographing Icicles with Michelle Hague

Duluth photographer Michelle Hague loves to capture the beauty of Minnesota, and has a special passion for icicle photography.

In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.

Broken Duluth: Reviewing photos from a 2017 exhibit

In the video above, photographer Kip Praslowicz reviews eight large-format images from his 2017 exhibition Broken Duluth. Prints of the photos are for sale at kpraslowicz.com.

Mystery Photo #126: Twin ‘Tin Man’ Water Towers

The harbor looks busy in this vintage photo for sale at the Superior Salvation Army

I found this framed photo with an unusual view of the Duluth Harbor and Aerial Lift Bridge at the Superior Salvation Army last weekend. It’s signed by Tim Slattery.

Lots of questions about this picture: Was the photo taken from a structure or from an airplane? Can anyone identify the three (!) ships in the port? What jumped out to me were the twin “tin man” water towers on the hill above the bridge. Where were they located and when were they taken down?

Duluth photos repaired and colorized: 19th century people/places

Streetcar Barn (1882)
Superior Street and 11th Avenue West

All of the photos here come from the University of Minnesota Duluth, Kathryn A. Martin Library through the Minnesota Reflections website. While most of the pictures on the site have been well preserved, some have been damaged over the years. For six of these photographs, I digitally repaired any damage and then added color.

Selective Focus: Pandemic Persistence

This week, a quick update on two artists we’ve featured earlier this year. Carolyn Olson and Annelisa Roseen both started projects at the beginning of the pandemic, and are still regularly producing pieces based on the theme and guidelines they set for themselves. Carolyn Olson paints and draws essential workers in their settings, and Annelisa Roseen takes a selfie each day in make-up and costume of an interesting person born on that day.

Duluth Junkyard in 1937

Russell Lee shot this photograph of a Duluth junkyard in May of 1937 for the United States Resettlement Administration, predecessor to the Farm Security Administration, which eventually became part of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.

Postcard from the Duluth Civic Center

This undated postcard image from the Gallagher Studio of Photography shows the St. Louis County Courthouse and Duluth City Hall behind the Soldiers and Sailors Monument at the Duluth Civic Center. The card is perhaps a bit older than another postcard of the Civic Center featured on Perfect Duluth Day, which shows a more expansive garden.

The Kozy 2010/2020

Top: Kozy Apartments on Nov. 17, 2010 — two days after a fire.
Bottom: Kozy Apartments on Nov. 17, 2020 — 16 days after a fire.

Selective Focus: November Snow Scenes

Select images of pre-winter via Instagram.

Minnesota Point in Winter Circa 1875

Photographers William Caswell and William Henry Davy ran a studio in Duluth circa 1870-75 and were responsible for many of the stereographs circulated during the era. The image above depicts a typical winter scene along the shore of Lake Superior.

Mystery Photo #125: A&E Supply

Back when he was a student at East High School, Ben Marsen acquired a collection of photo negatives of scenes from around Duluth. The one above appears to have been shot on the 200 block of West Michigan Street, maybe where the rear entrances to R.T. Quinlan’s Saloon and Minnesota Surplus are located today — the proper addresses being 220 and 218 W. Superior St.

Duluth Boat Course

The Library of Congress has three photos on file labeled “Duluth Boat Course.” Above they are stitched together in Perfect Duluth Day’s attempt to see if they were intended to be used as a panorama. It almost kind of works.

Below are the three separate images, which show much better detail on their own. The photos are attributed to Bain News Service and dated “between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920.”

Mystery Photo: Owl Studio

The back of this postcard photo indicates it was shot at the Owl Studio, 10 E. Superior. St., next to Duluth’s Empress Theatre. It’s the same address as the Wide Awake Studio, which was featured in a previous Mystery Photo.

Halloween Banners


Got some photos of awesome Halloween memories? Want to share them with the PDD ghouls and goblins? Send them our way, we will add them to the banner rotation — the long skinny photos at the top of the page when you view Perfect Duluth Day on a desktop computer. (There are no photo banners if you are on a smartphone.)

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!