Our Sepia Saturday theme this week is scouts but the ever-kind Sepia Saturday administrator has allowed us to widen the theme to incorporate other youth groups. This allows me to feature this 1924 photograph of the 9th Company, Bradford Battalion of the Boys Brigade. The Boys Brigade (BB) was - and indeed still is - an interdenominational Christian youth organisation which has a history that goes back further than the more widely known Boy Scout movement.
The photograph must have been taken from a newspaper or magazine and at some stage my father has conveniently pinpointed himself (just as well as many of the young lads look just the same to me). My father (AB = Albert Burnett) would have been 13 at the time and if I look very carefully I suspect I can recognise him.
If I try and enlarge the photograph I finish up with a completely different, heavily pixillated image which Andy Warhol would have been proud of. Within it I can still see my father, gazing out of a pattern of two or three hundred individual ink spots. It's a picture within a picture, a life within a century.
To see how others have interpreted Sepia Saturday 117, parade on over to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.
Excellent that the picture survived at all, the boys look quite proud in their uniforms. A banner Sepia day for the Boys Brigade.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was in the BB in Sheffield just about this time.
ReplyDeleteThe pixillated image reminded me that for the Seattle World's Trade Fair, when I worked at NCR, did an image with the pixels so large that when you were close to it or about 10 feet from it you could not tell what it was. You had to be 30 or more feet from it to clearly see what it was. It was a big attraction that year at the fair. I had made some leather covered accounting card reading machines for them which was also a hit.
ReplyDeleteI never would have picked out your dad, because of that hat! I'm SO used to seeing that great head of hair he had!
ReplyDeleteI always wonder why some uniform hats like the ones in this picture are worn on the side of the head.
ReplyDeleteThe enlarged photo of your dad immediately reminded me of Andy Warhol. That was to be my comment, but you beat me to it!
ReplyDeleteNancy
How funny that we both posted our Dads in pillbox caps! It’s wonderful to have clippings like this from so far back. The pixillated image is interesting. I slid back and forth on my office chair until I got as far back as I could to view it. Try it!
ReplyDeleteI was thinking Warhol too. That blowup would make a fine framed photo. Stand across the room and you'd see your dad. Stand up close and you'd see all the parts of him.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Nell! I'm feeling nauseous due to the motion of my office chair - it couldn't possible be your Dad's pixillated image. Fine clipping.
ReplyDeleteI somehow can't imagine the 13 year olds of today wearing those rakishly angled pillbox hats! Your father and his cohort are lined up very smart in their BB uniforms.
ReplyDeleteI love sepia always Alan:) nice! some days (i hope ) I will sharing of my pics and from my Mom (lol)
ReplyDeleteAn amazingly clear photo despite the wrinkles and tears. You're lucky to have it.
ReplyDeleteThis photo helps to tell a story about your Dad and a common organization at the time.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad he marked the photo with his initials. I love those pillbox hats; they're dapper and official at the same time.
ReplyDeletevery cool pics man...yeah hard to tell anything in those old newspaper clippings....very cool. was in cub scouts years back, never made it to boy scouts
ReplyDeleteHi Alan, your ever-kindness is the best part about Sepia Saturday! Your pictures, large and small, are great. The drums are really cool too. I wonder how long the "dot matrix" printers have actually been around?
ReplyDeleteKathy M.
Now I'm wondering if they did scout like activities or mostly marched around to the eat of drums and maybe even fought each other in a battalion like way.
ReplyDelete'Join the dots with your eyes' is a fun game. I'm amazed that much-folded piece of newspaper survived. I wonder if it lived in someone's wallet or purse - his mum's perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI walked all the way across the room, then backed away even further, into the depths of my kitchen, to get a good look at the close-up of your dad. He was a nice-looking boy, polka dots and all.
ReplyDeleteYour pixillated image has certainly had us all walking backwards across a room this week; you could call it exercise with Sepia Saturday:-) It looks like a cherished memory from the folds, and great he has 'signed' it amongst the large troop.
ReplyDeleteA great old clipping..I think you have to look at the whole ..not just part! :)
ReplyDeleteA wonderful piece of ephemera made more valuable with the patina of tears and folds. It's curious that the drums have lines drawn onto them. And the enlargement is a perfect way to focus attention.
ReplyDelete