Cut and Paste

My recent journey with the Wayback Machine reminded me about my "Cut and Paste" booklets. Amazingly, I readily located my photo albums from college as well as the booklets I created during those years. Cut and Paste was a diversion from my studies and an opportunity to use my imagination. In going through the booklets I note that they are also representative of the time period. Boomers will readily recognize some of the images and recall their source.

The Cut and Paste Process: Collect magazines like "Time" and "People" that contain a lot of photographs and advertising. "Life" and "Time" magazines were my best sources at the time. Once you have a good supply of source material, go through the magazines and cut out interesting pictures, article headings, and advertising copy. Keep the photos and captions separate. Then spread everything out on a large table and start combining photos with unlikely captions. Glue the picture and caption on a piece of paper to get something like the following:

I believe the above picture is from an article about drummer Buddy Rich. The caption is from a cigarette ad.

The equestrian crowd will recognize the following picture as Princess Ann and Captain Mark Phillips back in the day when they were an item. Again, the caption is from an ad.


I've started scanning my Cut and Paste booklets, since the originals are obviously yellowing with age and the glue is dying a slow death. I have to admit, I still get a laugh out of many of them.