I have to say, it doesn't feel like London, England to me. We don't generally write greenbelt as one word, and it's not really a place that we call by name - we refer to 'the green belt'. However, it does appear to be turning into an adjective, as in 'the council has sold 10,000 acres of greenbelt land to developers', but I'd be surprised if that applied in 1942 when the concept of the green belt was still quite new.
Also, I don't know any reason why it would have the hyphenated number, which feels to me like a telephone number. It's certainly possible in 1942+ that the owner was an American applying US conventions to such things, but it seems highly unlikely that 'Greenbelt' refers to anything over here. 'Greenbelt' would not have been a telephone exchange in London. I see from Google that there are some towns in the USA called Greenbelt, so perhaps it refers to one of these, or to a district with a Greenbelt exchange. A designation like 2R or 2 R can sometimes refer to an army regiment, eg the 2nd London Regiment, but that was apparently disbanded before WWII. Perhaps the photographer was one R London... > On 27 Mar 2016, at 05:20, Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote: > > Was happy to see the 1939 (First Edition) of the Photo Lab Index show > up in my mailbox this morning. It took me a while to notice the 6 > pages of typewritten "INSTRUCTIONS FOR PRINTING AND PROCESSING ANSCO > COLOR PAPER" folded in half inside the back cover. What I found > interesting was what the previous owner had written (multiple times) > on the back of the folded instructions: > > PHOTOGRAPHER > Have your Portrait made. > Greenbelt-5846 > 2-R-London > > According to Google Books, "Ansco Color Paper" was called "a worthy > newcomer" in a 1942 Journal of Photographic Society of America. > Interestingly, the instructions refer to how it "may be printed from > the usual black-and-white separation negatives or the more recently > available complementary color negatives." Perhaps not coincidentally, > 1942 was also the year that Kodak introduced Kodacolor, "the first > color film that yields negatives for making chromogenic color prints > on paper. Roll films for snapshot cameras only, 35 mm not available > until 1958". > > Therefore it appears that a (the?) previous owner of my book was a > Londoner and he penciled his (not so creative) advertisement (which > appears to me to be sort of an aspiration) not very long after the > London Blitz ended (May 1941). > > I'm not sure what the 2-R designation before "London" means. But it > appears that Green Belt refers to an area known as "The Metropolitan > Green Belt" which, around London, was first proposed by the Greater > London Regional Planning Committee in 1935. > > It makes me wonder who this PHOTOGRAPHER was and if he (the penmanship > appears to be masculine) ever got to place his ad and take Londoner's > portraits. > > > -- > “The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ” > ― Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Earth from Above > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
