Shortly after leaving high school, Szymanski enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He was assigned to a photo reconnaissance company where he received formal training in photography. Most of his tour of duty was spent in the South Pacific assigned to the 20th Division of the United States Army Air Corps stationed on Guam. After he left the service, Szymanski was hired by Atlas where he worked as a chemist. He continued his interest in photography, taking classes at the Antonelli School of Photography in Philadelphia working on the side for the Lubitsh and Bungarz Studio and as a free-lance photographer for the News Journal. He died before before his family took the opportunity to talk to him about these images, so much of his story relating to them remains untold. Thanks to the public-spiritedness of his family, his collection has been donated to the Historical Society of Delaware. The photographs will remain in the collections, giving our generation, and future generations, a look back into neighborhood life on the East Side of Wilmington. Click here to return to the main East Side home page. Click here for a gallery of some of the photographs (including those shown on the right) currently being shown in Wilmington in the 1930s: Focus on the East Side. |
The
photographic images in Wilmington in the 1930s: Focus on the East
Side, are the work of a high school-aged man, Henry Szymanski, Sr.,
who grew up just blocks from the neighborhoods shown in the
exhibit. Szymanski lived on the 200 block of Lombard Street and
learned photography at the Boys Club (shown here on left with newspaper
salesman "Big Nose" Sammy on the right) . He became proficient and
practiced his craft by photographing the exteriors of businesses, their
owners, pastors, community events, and the faces of this nearby but
often forgotten part of Wilmington. Most likely he earned a few
dollars by selling these images to their subjects. What is
remarkable is his ability at such a young age both to compose the image
and to light interiors without a flash.