Matynka - Haremski Mystery Photo, or "Excuses, Excuses"

Here at the Coot Hill Preservation Society HQ, work slows on occasion, such as those occasions when the Directress tends to indoor plants, following the example of her paternal grandfather, John Peter Zdrojewski.  JPZ customarily started tomato plants in cut-down milk cartons set on the windowsills at 175 May Street, Buffalo, New York.

Here we've got some cauliflower, hot peppers, seedless watermelon, and Digitalis.

There are other jobs, as well.

Nevertheless, when the Haremski Iconograph was discovered the other day (see the post itself) CHPSHQ felt that the time had come to bring to light the Haremski-Matynka trove. Here it is, exploded all over the worktable.

This stack is of things from the high-school career of Mom, Clara Adamina Matynka Zdrojewska, CAMZ.  She was a fine-arts major in high school.  See the folio?

History, literature, and religion:

One large print was tucked in with a collection of snapshots Mom (CAMZ) took at summer camp whilst a teenager.  I brought it down.

Two facts help us here:  Clara was born in 1929.  There was color film from the 1930s, yes indeed.

Verso, we see a plain but stout cardboard backing.  Not professionally done, but carefully and deliberately done.

The buildings in the background of the new find resemble the buildings in the background of the Haremski Iconograph.  Don't they?

Looks like the photographer was of shorter stature than her subject.  Did the teenage Clara snap this photo?  Did she have it developed at her school?  I feel certain she did the backing - she kept on doing that all her life, up to and including with photos of her grandchildren.

Who is this man?

Was he the hired man at the Haremski farm?

Was he a neighbor of the Haremski family, or a family friend?

Was he Clara's father's father, Adam Matynka's father, visiting his in-laws at a family party in the country?  If so, this is the only photo we have of that man, whose name we do not know.

Was he a relative of the Zientarska?  He does look like her.

Watch any Polish historical dramas lately?  That face is in there among the Polish fighters resisting the Tatars or the Teutonic Knights, in a Wajda film.

And of course the mustache is pure Pilsudski.  Wow, look at his face, also!

Suppose Clara, Mom, CAMZ, did take the Haremski Mystery Photo.  If so, then she probably took the Haremski Iconograph as well, and thus that is her shadow on the grass behind the Zientarska.

Furthermore, say she was 15 years old at the time.  

1929 + 15 = 1944.  

Clara grows up during 1939-1945, saving tin and aluminum and listening to the radio news - including news about distant cousins on the other side of an ocean.