Fixing Them For Eternity

This coming Saturday will mark the 100th Sepia Saturday : quite a milestone for something which started as a bit of a joke between Kat Mortensen and myself. Even though its' origin can be found in a convenient alliteration, its' mission was always serious : to preserve and share old images via the internet. Within a few weeks, Sepia Saturday had attracted a number of loyal weekly contributors and followers, and over the last two years it has gone from strength to strength. For Sepia Saturday 100 we are asking contributors old and new to join in with a post that is linked to the list on the Sepia Saturday Blog. As a lead-up to Sepia Saturday itself I am going to spend the week looking at all types of old image and I am starting with one of the most popular types of all - the old family photograph.

This is a scan of a tiny two inch square print which must have been taken at a family celebration. The young child being held at the front of the picture is, I suspect, my brother Roger which means that the photograph must have been taken in the mid 1940s.

We can be a little more certain about the others in the group because someone has attached a convenient yellow sticker to the back (and it looks as though it is my writing). Thus, I can tell you that on the back row (from the left) is my paternal grandfather, Enoch Burnett, my uncles Wilf and Harry (the musical workhorse), and my maternal grandfather Albert Beanland. The centre row has my grandmothers Harriet-Ellen Burnett and Kate Beanland, whilst the front row features my Auntie Amy, my mother, my Auntie Annie ... and the mysterious child. My father is missing from the picture (but he would have been taking it) and so am I : I had yet to make an appearance. When I took the photograph out of the box that contains all my old family photographs the yellow sticker had all but fallen off : that precious key to the identification of three generations of my family was almost lost. This post has given me the opportunity to fix the identifications for all time, to attach a digital sticker to the image which will stay there for all time and which will be available to anyone who cares to do a Google search.

And that, of course, was partly what Sepia Saturday was all about. We are the first generation that has had access to such powerful archiving tools. Many of us are the keepers of old images of one type or another. It is our task to fix them for eternity.