This month, in honour of Halloween, our featured photograph is of a young girl in a clown costume. This photograph is part of a photo album by a young Chinese-American in the 1910’s named Frank Jue.
All that we know about the young girl in this photograph is that it is captioned “Bernice.” It may not have been a Halloween costume- this photo album contains a number of theatrical and humourous photographs that appear to have been taken just for fun. Frank Jue (also known as Jue Fong) was a teenager during this time period, and we know little about him also, except that he went on to sing as a tenor. While the collection contains many portraits of Chinese-Canadians and -Americans, candid photographs are more difficult to come by, which makes this album a very valuable resource.