The delightful thing about Sepia Saturday prompts is that they spark visual links that defy language. I cannot really explain in words why this weeks prompt image sent me off in search of a particular photograph of my mother, Gladys Burnett, but it did. It may be something about the shape of the lips, quite possibly it is the chin: but with images, explanations are unnecessary. Quite literally, you can see what I mean.
In fact, it is not a photograph in its own right but a detail from a larger photograph that features Gladys Beanland (as she then was) and her older sister Amy. Gladys was born in 1911 and I suspect that she was about eight or nine when this photograph was taken, which dates it as about 1919 or 1920.
Can I see my mother - the Gladys of some thirty years later - in this photograph? It's difficult to say. It's not the face, certainly it isn't the hair. But there may be something about the shape of the lips and the chin. I can see what I mean.
This is a Sepia Saturday post. To see other posts in response to this weeks prompt, go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.
What a lovely photograph.
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely a resemblance between sisters in the full photograph and appears to have to do with the lips. And when you put your mother's child photograph next to the prompt, it certainly does look much like a lip match - even profile to full face. Nice going and good eye! Plus your Mum was a cutie! And if she grew up to look like her older sister, a beauty!
ReplyDeleteAlan, I can also see the expression is similar, a soft staring you down kind of look, whether with approval or not, there's strength in the look!
ReplyDeleteLove Gladys' bow, hair and expression.
ReplyDeleteGladys has a wistful look in this photo. Love her shoes!
ReplyDeleteAs a child I can remember my mother introducing me to her youthful self in an old photograph. I think it was my first encounter with the flexible M\'f6bius strip of time. It seemed very curious that someone could simultaneously be both old and young. Even now when I meet myself in an old photo, I am surprised that I can't remember how I got there from here in the future.
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As a child I can remember my mother introducing me to her youthful self in an old photograph. I think it was my first encounter with the flexible M\'f6bius strip of time. It seemed very curious that someone could simultaneously be both old and young. Even now when I meet myself in an old photo, I am surprised that I can't remember how I got there from here in the future.
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