"Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence." - Eadweard Muybridge

This is such a great photo documenting the beginning of the Lutovsky clan in America. So, who are these people? This is Jan (John) Lutovsky and Katerina (Katherine) Broz Lutovsky, who are the two who emigrated from Bohemia in 1891 and 1888. Their 15 children can be considered as "Generation 0," by all of us who are descendants of the people in this photo, since all 15 of them were born in the USA. There will be more about John & Katherine and their family in upcoming posts.

I don't know exactly when this photo was taken, but most likely it was in 1917 given two factors. #1: Rudy (born February 1915) was the last child born, and he looks to be about 2 years old or so in this photo. #2: Charles is in the photo and he had fought in WWI. His enlistment date was May 27th 1918, so this photo was obviously taken prior to then.

I labeled everyone in the photo so we would all have a little familiarity of who is who as I go on to talk about our ancestors. The labeling of this photo took a few years and input from many different people, all of whom are descendants of the people in this photo, and I'd like to thank everyone for their help. Collectively we nailed it!

I ran this old sepia toned photo through a colorization filter and created the below version, which to me is fun to look at because it makes everyone look not so depressed and it adds a bit of life to that moment in time.

On a side note, the clothing everyone is wearing is pretty impressive. This is not the look of a poor peasant family. Cheap synthetics hadn't been invented yet, although the first "man-made" natural fiber fabric was being produced in the US, which started in 1911, and in 1924 got the name of Rayon. However, at this point Rayon, which was then known as "artificial silk," still wasn't considered cheap. It was less expensive than super expensive real silk, but it still wasn't economical. My point being, to outfit these 17 people in suits, ties and Sunday best clothing, would have cost quite a bit.