A variant of this work, titled “Interested” and printed straight rather than the high-key, vignetted treatment seen here, won Guss the silver medal for Competition No. 30, part of a continuing series of contests sponsored by the Philadelphia based journal The Camera. The subject of this work, a little boy standing and examining a book with great interest, was most likely a Guss family member.

Loren E. Guss: 1874-1964

Amateur photographer Loren Guss was active at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century in Spring City, PA, a northern suburb of Philadelphia. A printer by trade according to his death certificate, by 1898, he was the Secretary of the family business organized on June 15, 1891: the Spring City Steam Paper and Box Manufacturing Company.