Update, Aug. 20 | After several weeks of research, City Room has concluded that the upper left of the four photographs, at right, depicts Marc Chagall and his second wife, Valentina Brodsky, known as Vava. Our research-intensive journey involved our readers, historians, archivists, writers and curators in the United States and France — and even the former Rolling Stones bass guitarist (and accomplished photographer) Bill Wyman. Therefore, the winner of the Pop Quiz — and the recipient of our belated congratulations — is Joe, who correctly named the people in all photographs at 11:46 a.m. on July 30, the day of the Pop Quiz.
Original Post, Aug. 5 | After last week’s Pop Quiz, we thought some astute City Room reader would quickly help us identify the mystery couple in this old picture from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s incomplete archives.
To mark the 60th anniversary of Kennedy Airport, we asked readers to identify people shown arriving on the tarmac with fanfare in four pictures provided by the authority.
This undated photo shows a couple arriving the airport (probably when it was still known as Idlewild). The archive mistakenly identified this couple as David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, and his wife, Paula. Photo comparisons and interviews with experts confirmed the error but failed to identify the couple. (A number of readers in the comments have been making a persuasive case that the picture shows the painter Marc Chagall and his second wife, Vava, sometime in 1959-1961. We’ll keep pursuing that possibility.)
Still on the case is a reader named Nat, who wrote this week:
Concerning the first photo, based on further (but not exhaustive) examination of other photos and materials, of all the possibilities mentioned thus far, the only one that I have not been able to rule out is Édouard Daladier (who was my idea)….
Compare the first photo to several front-face photos of Daladier, preferably post-war, and see what you think.
Nat puts forth “further directions for detective work that The Times’s resourceful journalists can better initiate than me”:
- The woman in the first photo would be Daladier’s second wife, Jeanne Boucoiran. When they married he was 67, she 44. That age difference would fit the couple in the photo. She was both a French government official and a part-time professor of French at Middlebury College, but at this date that’s probably a long-shot in terms of identification assistance.
- Daladier’s son, Jean Daladier, in 1995 published his father’s “Prison Journal, 1940-1945” (Boulder: Westview Press). The book had a foreword by Stanley Hoffman, a Harvard professor (Center for European Studies) who might be able to identify Daladier (or whomever) in a photo.
- If you have access to Paris Match archives, its issue “du 19 janvier 1952” has an article on “LE MARIAGE LE PLUS SECRET DE L’ANNEE 1951: EDOUARD DALADIER EPOUSE JEANNE BOUCOIRAN” which perhaps includes a photograph.
Of course, this may be completely off-base (and having had the Daladier idea, I don’t fully trust my own photo comparisons), but I am hoping that, City Room having stirred this up, you will find some excitement in the historical photo-detective work, the skills for which are useful for, and can be gained by, studying NYC history. And after all, this may be a rare photograph of the couple joined by “le mariage le plus secret de l’année.”
Alas, we are not historians. We’re stumped. But this seems like a perfect chance to try some of that crowd-sourcing we keep hearing about. Experts, please step forward!
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