This toned gravure shows Poppelbaum at work in the dark-room examining a developed glass negative at the Packard Motor Car Company. It was used as the Vollgros frontispiece inset into the portfolio plates wrapper.

C.F. Poppelbaum was from Chicago at the time this portfolio was published.

Charles F. Poppelbaum: 1864-1945

Poppelbaum was the head photographer for the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit. A September, 1912 article on the firm in The Printing Art shows the work of the photography department and even includes a photo of Poppelbaum in the darkroom examining a plate: “The versatile Poppelbaum in characteristic pose-developing a plate in the special negative dark room“. It is from this photo that this archive can deduce that the Vollgros plate “Disappointed” features none other than Poppelbaum himself. Later in 1921, the journal The Inland Printer lists him as being associated with Bertsch & Cooper, a Chicago design firm that had done ad campaigns for Packard. It is unknown to this archive if Packard’s design and photography studio was based in Detroit or Chicago, although it may be the latter, as the Vollgros plate index lists the photographer as being from Chicago.