Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: headdresses

A Vintage Photos Theme Park photo for the theme of tricks or treats! (any kind of Halloween photo, including costumes, masks, jack-o'-lanterns, decorations, ghosts, skeletons, haunted houses, or anything spooky, scary, or frightening; no limit—post as many Halloween photos as you'd like!) . Handwritten caption in green ink, lower right-hand corner: "Jack - Hallow-Eve - 1933." A real photo postcard showing "Jack" -- usually a man's name -- dressed as a woman for Halloween in 1933. The photo was previously pasted in an album and has remnants of paper and glue on the other side. The photographic paper used for the postcard backing has an Azo stamp box (squares in all four corners, in use from 1924 to 1949).

An on the water photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. A curious photo of a boy and a dog in a rowboat out on the water. Both of them are looking toward the photographer, who's on the shore or in another boat. The boy is holding a fish in one hand and a fishing rod in the other, and he's wearing a headdress and other clothing in imitation of Native American garb (for a closer view, see a cropped version ). Along the far shore in the background is what looks like the silhouette of a swan, though it seems much too big to be a real bird. This is an unused real photo postcard with an AZO stamp box on the back that suggests that the photo may date to sometime between 1904 and 1918 (or perhaps later).

A real photo postcard of a young boy in what is apparently intended to portray Native American clothing. The photo was taken at Penn Park Studio in York, Pa. I wonder whether this was a Halloween costume.

Posted to the Vintage Photos Theme Park group as a "strange clothing" photo. This real photo postcard shows a group of men who belonged to "Katunka Tribe No. 453," which was the York, Pa., chapter of the Improved Order of Red Men , or IORM for short. The York chapter no longer exists but the national group is still around (despite the fact that "Red Men" is now considered an offensive term for Native Americans) and calls itself " America's Oldest Fraternal Organization " on its Web site. When you realize that none of the men in this photo were Native Americans, it seems awfully strange--at least from our modern perspective nearly a century later--that they dressed in Native American garb (however inauthentic their interpretation of the clothing may have been) for their group ceremonies and rituals. In case you're interested in additional information, Blake Stough discussed the history and controversial aspects of the York IORM group in his article Politically Incorrect or Not--Still A Part of York County History on the Preserving York blog (the article included this photo with my permission).