On this day in Special Collections - Curious Balkan Ceremonial Garb....
Long have I loved the swooning accordions and heart-wrenching cries of Balkan music (thank you, Beirut circa Gulag Orkestar, be still my heart). Goran Bregovic, Boban Markovic and other of the regions most famous musicians give the listener an almost tactile sense of the blood-drenched history of the Balkan lands.
Needless to say, I was thrilled when I came to the section in in the Ryan WWI photographs collection entitled "American Red Cross in the Balkans." There weren't near as many images in this section as with others in the albums, but I certainly paid the most attention to it nonetheless. The images feature a beautiful spectrum of weathered field-toiling people, and I have selected some of the most poignant and interesting ones for your viewing.
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| This ceremony was of great interest to me. The pictures related to it bear no labels, but feature twin sisters and a few other girls in gilded outfits with elaborate breastplates displaying a vast number of coins. Based on a few other photographs, it seems that the ceremony must be a sort of math-making or coming-of-age type affair. |
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| I am smitten with this little child. |
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| Horses trudging through deep hay |
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