wal and nan...

... I just love this picture - it's one of the several thousand loaned to me by my Aunt Joan - and I really like the way they are dressed in best bib and tucker, and the expression on their faces.
Wal and Nan sent this picture to my Granpa and Nana, perhaps for Christmas one year? The picture must have been taken in the 1920s or '30s because Ernie (who the picture is addressed to) was my Nana's second husband - her first died young. She married again and they had two children - my mum and Aunt Joan. My mum is 85, so that means this picture was taken some time after 1920 (when my mum was born). The photo came in a rather tastefully textured presentation folder with the printed message "Hearty Greetings"; written in hand on the back - "Wal and Nan with love to Ernie and Dora".

There are hundreds of wonderful photos in the collection. But there are also many duff ones featuring headless people and featureless landscapes - some of the worst date from the 60s and 70s - it's almost as if people lost the ability to take good snaps at the end of the 50s. It makes an interesting comparison to now, when as a result of the introduction of digital technology the quality of people's photography has improved immensely, both technically and aesthetically.

The oldest images in my aunt's collection date back to "cartes de visite" and "cabinet portraits" which were produced between about 1860 and 1900. Photography only really became a commercial proposition in the 1850s, so these early images were quite possibly produced at a time when Dickens was still writing - this is a spine-tingling thought - to be connected so intimately, via the image, with people who were probably born before Victoria came to the throne.

I will post some those early images soon - they need to be scanned with care, and I would like to experiment with enhancing the images to remove fold marks and the effects of fading etc