Unearthed photos find new life online thanks to Elgin couple

The work of an amateur photographer whose passion was boxed up after his death is getting new exposure thanks to an Elgin couple who inherited his more than 20,000 Kodachrome slides.

In a story not unlike that of Vivian Maier, a Chicago-area nanny whose street photographs were discovered after her death, Irving AJ Lawres was a retired banker who became an avid shooter after retirement. After her death in 1982, her work ended first at her sister’s home, then her niece’s, and then, in 2005, at the Elgin home of Amy Wisinski and her husband, Robb Walker.

Wisinski, Lawres’ great-niece, also kept them until about two years ago, when the couple decided to take a closer look and were surprised by what they found.

Lawres’ work captures locations around the world that offer a singular look at fashion, architecture, automobiles and what life was like more than 50 years ago, they said.

“One of my favorites is of a sunbather on a rocky beach in Sochi,” Wisinski said.

Bringing this body of work into the 21st century has become their mission. They clean and archive the photos and make the prints available online for purchase at shop.walkerlawres.com.

Lawres was born in 1901 in Milwaukee. After graduating from Marquette University, he went to New York to earn a master’s degree, then embarked on a banking career, Wisinski said.

“He and his wife, Maribel, traveled extensively, both domestically and internationally,” Walker said. “He was a member of the Photographic Society of America. He was one of a very small group of American photographers invited to Soviet Russia in 1974 to document life behind the Iron Curtain.”

Lawres wrote articles for the Photographic Society and his photo of Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral appeared on the cover of the PSA Journal in October 1974, Walker said. He also participated in some competitions and became involved in clubs devoted to presenting and discussing slides of their work, Wisinski said.

“And he denounced what he called the tyranny of the rules in photography and the way images were judged in competitions at the time,” said Walker, a retired accountant.

Walker’s interest in photography emerged around the same time he inherited Lawres’ slides, he said.

“My father-in-law actually let me pick out one of Irv’s old cameras,” he said.

The couple says bringing photos back to life is a good way to counter the growing use of AI images. Plus, vintage shots also come with good stories, they said.

This is because Lawres extensively organized, cataloged and noted his work. Although some slides have broken down over the years, they are mostly in good condition and have been relatively easy to use, Walker said.

They joined the American Photography Archives Group, which helped them learn how to preserve old photos.

“So far I have managed to organize, clean and digitize just over 200 slides,” Walker said. “Of these 200, I have already deemed over 50 images good enough to be offered as prints on our Walker Lawres online store.”

He also found therapeutic value in creating ink-over-watercolor paintings based on Lawres’ photos, some of which are also for sale in the online store, he said.

For his part, Walker said he was impressed by the quality of Lawres’s photo composition.

An image of a restaurant in Naples, Italy, that is still in operation, shows what it looked like decades ago, he said. Another shows two boys praying near a statue of the Virgin Mary in an Italian courtyard.

“It looks like a watercolor and seems fitting for this (Lent) time of year,” Walker said.

One of his favorites is a photo of a long-closed spa and hotel in Palm Springs, he said.

While his wife still works as a marketing consultant at a law firm, Walker said his retirement years will be devoted to archiving the collection.

“There are a lot of subjects that we can’t see today. It’s like opening a time capsule,” he said.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.