Every picture tells a story.

Byline: Jane Burek For The Register-Guard

About 1910, a young millworker by the name of Smith Mountjoy took up photography as a hobby. Using his cord- activated bellows camera, he gathered workers for group portraits in places such as the Seavey hops fields and Southern Pacific railyards.

Interestingly, he often dressed up like his subjects and stepped into the shot.

"If you look at this photo, Mountjoy is here in the center of the bottom row, and you can see him holding the cord that tripped the camera," says Jack Gischel, the Springfield Museum board president and curator of the musuem's exhibit, "Springfield in Focus."

"We don't think he was actually out there tying up hops, but he got himself in the picture rather enthusiastically," Gischel says.

In another photo, Mountjoy - a sort of early day Forrest Gump - poses as a section crew member on the railroad.

On display now through the end of the month, the exhibit features 75 photos from the museum's archives that provide casual glimpses into everyday life in Springfield, primarily from the late 1880s through the 1920s. Nineteen photos are from the Smith Mountjoy Collection, with others from seven other local photography enthusiasts of the day.

Popular "Brownie" cameras from the 1930s through the 1960s are also on display, as well as a bellows camera such as the one Mountjoy would have used.

Museum Director Debra Gruell says it was lay photo hobbyists such as Mountjoy who have provided the museum with imagery from past decades, especially the early 1900s.

For example, there's a photo of a poultry seller with plucked chickens dangling overhead.

"Today, we'd all wince at buying meat hanging out all day at an open-air market, but that's where you bought it back then," Gruell says.

In another Mountjoy photo, a dignified baker poses in his professional kitchen wearing the requisite cotton linen uniform and white ascot.

Little is known of Mountjoy other than he worked for the Booth-Kelly Mill for 30-some years before retiring.

Mountjoy took most of his photos as a young man in the 1900s and 1910s. "After that, he had a wife and family. It was his second wife, Rhonda, who donated all his photos to the museum," Gischel says.

With more than 300 enlarged and mounted photos to choose from, Gischel says he repeatedly found himself drawn to the faces and details in Mountjoy's shots.

"See the lace-up boots and hats in this one?" he asks. "I mainly picked the photos with interesting people - and so many were from the Smith Mountjoy Collection."

Gischel says the exhibit is not meant to be comprehensive - just a literal snapshot of people and places in Springfield's early days, when the hills were grassy, housing was sparse and the Booth-Kelly mill was the main employer.

Changing times are evident in photos of the Glenwood Bridge dated 1891, 1910 and 1927.

Built, rebuilt and discontinued, the bridge connected Springfield to Glenwood over the years, carrying wagons, trains and old-time cars of their day. The bridge also supported the city's population growth, from 200 residents in 1890 to a bustling town of more than 2,500 in 1920.

To help put such development in perspective, Gischel also included a few aerial photos taken in the 1950s.

"These photos were taken much later than the others, but you can see the riverfront and empty fields and identify other locations," he says. "It's a reference point so visitors can figure out where things used to be in relation to what's there now."

In a 20-minute browse of the exhibit, visitors learn how Springfield sprouted from its proximity to rich agricultural land and the hydropower of the Willamette and McKenzie rivers, which powered grain mills and sawmills built on their banks.

Photos show a ferry boat shuttling workers across the McKenzie River to the hops fields across from the present-day location of PeaceHealth's Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

"There were additional fields on the south end of town, where Seavey Loop is today. Hops workers had to take ferries to those yards, too," Gischel says, pointing out the workers' cotton-linen dresses, long-sleeve shirts and woven wide-brimmed hats, which more resemble a Ralph Lauren fashion ad than sweaty work clothes.

"I should have been born a century ago," Gruell says, pondering the formality of the era. "There's so much going on in these photos.

"Here's Jess Seavey in 1912 driving his car and towing a boat down Main and Fourth streets. The more you look, the more you see."

Adele Cameron of Cottage Grove, a recent visitor to the museum, expressed a similar sentiment.

"I like to visit the world from 100 years ago," Cameron says, inspecting an oversize picture of a working team of horses at a sawmill. "Wouldn't it be fantastic to see draft horses going down the streets of Springfield again?

"I'd love to see that."

SPRINGFIELD IN FOCUS

Museum exhibit showcases historic black-and-white photos

When and where: Exhibit continues through March at the Springfield Museum, 590 Main St.

Hours and admission: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays; $2 for nonmember adults, 18 and younger admitted free.

More information: 726-2300 or www.springfieldmuseum.com