WE'VE HOME

 

So, what have we got? We've a bare-faced hillside and a quarried landscape. We've a mill or two, a couple of chimneys, and some terraced houses stacked like dominoes. We've Halifax sixty years ago. We've home.

FONT OF ALL KNOWLEDGE

 

I've always loved letters. Some folks like the melodic strokes of a good landscape; with others, it's the sensuous lines of the naked form. With me, it is a cursive "s" or a serif "a" that gets my blood pulsing through my elderly veins that little bit faster. Give me an unusual font or an adventurous typeface, and I'm a happy chap.

BACK STREET IN STOKE

 

This particular photo seems to have acquired the title "Back Street In Stoke" at some stage over the last fifty years. My apologies to my friends in the Potteries for this somewhat underwhelming and unspecific title: the truth is I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in the area in the early 1970s. I became convinced that North Staffordshire was a first cousin of West Yorkshire.

THE OTHER SIDE

This is the photograph in the other side of the small brooch that must have been handed down from someone within the family. No young Edwardian beauty this one, but she is a woman of character, millstone-grit strong with an unwillingness to countenance nonsense of any variety. 

IT'S SWINGING HALIFAX

It seems like a different era: an era of broken walls and spaces laid bare by slum-clearance programmes or enemy bombs. The church is the same; then it was plain Halifax Parish Church, and now it's a Minster. Perhaps it's the swings that date it - can this really be what was meant by the swinging sixties? It's a memory; it's history, it's Halifax.

ACCUMULATAE

 

I found this old brooch whilst sorting through a box of "accumulatae" (not sure if that is a word, but if not, it should be). I assume that it has come from within the family, and therefore the rather charming lady in the large hat is a relative of mine. Precisely who she is, I have no idea, but I have pleasure in presenting her to the world. On the reverse of the brooch is another portrait. I will return to that, later.

BALANCE BY POST

 

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week featured a postman delivering parcels in the snow, and my interpretation of the theme retains the snow but features a different kind of post. As agile as that interpretation of the theme may be, it has nothing on the agility of the chap in this 1924 photograph from my collection, who would appear to have the balance of a yoga master.

THAT'S ART

....... You can mess around with Photoshop filters and AI edits until you are blue in the face (or green, or orange or polka dot striped) but you will never equal the originality and brilliance of a real artist. To illustrate my point I give you a picture of Halifax painted by my brother when he was living over here in the 1990s. Now, that's art!

ART OR A PINT?

Is art in danger of being undermined by Artificial Intelligence? Why slave over a canvas for endless hours attempting to achieve a dramatic interpretation of a pub at the bottom of an old cobbled street in Halifax when you can press a button, produce a picture, and then go and enjoy a pint in peace? Well ...... (to be continued)

A REAL CANAL?

I took this photograph of the canal in Huddersfield thirteen or fourteen years ago. I'm sure it didn't actually look like this; I'm sure there were more half-tones flying about. It's an impression, however, and it has some nice shapes and a few pleasing patterns. It's not real - but what is?

IT'S A GAS

I don't normally go in for this clickbait thing or having adverts associated with my various online activities, but times are hard and we all have to make a living. Therefore, I would like to draw your attention to the exhibition and series of lectures and demonstrations that have been organised by the Halifax Corporation Gas Committee at the Drill Hall next week. Don't be late!

A HUNGRY HILL

I took this picture of Hunger Hill in Halifax forty years ago. There are a few more trees about these days and some of the buildings have changed, but the snow is still here. I asked AI to explain the origin of the name, and it came up with a somewhat silly theory that the road was so steep, early travellers were reduced to hunger by climbing it! AI has obviously never visited Halifax if it thinks it's a steep hill. Now, climbing Beacon Hill, that might make you hungry.

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Thank You, Lucy

 

Bright sun and black ice, monochrome trees and wood-blocked paths: our dog took us for a walk down Shepherds Thorn Lane the other day. Thank you, Lucy.

Body Building

Our Sepia Saturday theme this week is "Work In Days Gone By". Most of my family worked in the mills and factories of Yorkshire, but my Great Uncle Albert branched out and became a partner in a firm of motor body builders in Manchester. He left a photographic record of many of his creations, this being one of them. I like to think of it as a piece of mechanical sculpture.

Free School

This is a photo of mine from sixty years ago of a rural school in Ireland. I'm not sure exactly why I took the photo; maybe I just thought it was a colourful scene, or maybe I thought that it captured a changing world. I looked the school up the other day; it is long gone. One of the photo agencies was selling a photograph of the school when it was closed and derelict. You can have mine of when it was open and colourful for nothing.

Dark Satanic Exclamation Marks

On the second part of our walk around Halifax in the 1930s, note the snow around Halifax Parish Church (nothing changes, does it?), and the black spire of the town hall punctuating the smoke-stacked atmosphere. And note the mills, as dark and satanic as any Blake poem, punctuating the life of the town, their chimneys creating an endless pattern of exclamation marks.

Half A Walk

I'm inviting you to come and take a walk around Halifax in the 1930 courtesy of an old picture postcard from my collection. Or rather, half a picture postcard - the image is so full of fascinating detail I have divided it into two and you can see the second half tomorrow. You can start your walk at the station (centre-left) and work you way through the soot-black streets to the unmistakable Piece Hall. Enjoy!

The Fourth Little Piggy

This is one of the old mills that line the Calder and Hebble Navigation as it makes its way through Brighouse. It's like a practical demonstration of every kind of building method known to mankind. If there had been four little piggies in the tale, this is how the fourth piggy would have built his house.

Back Street, Back Then

I think this is somewhere in Halifax, and I believe I took the photograph sometime in the 1960s. My apologies for not being more exact and for not keeping a proper note of when and where these photographs were taken. I keep records now with endless metadata and geotagged locations. I have nothing better to do now; back then, I had a life to lead.

That Look

 

My love of images is very much a love of static images rather than moving ones. I'm not a TikTok type of chap; I've never been comfortable with films and videos. With a single photo, you are forced to survey the scene and then focus on the content: the caller's microphone, the attendant's raised arm, and that look, always that look.

A Walkley Man

 

My love of old photographs has led me to collect thousands of them over the years and share them with fellow enthusiasts throughout the world. One way in which I do this is via a weekly internet meme, Sepia Saturday, which I started way back in 2009. Our theme this week is "Old Photographs As Works Of Art," and my contribution is this wonderful portrait of an unknown man, which I acquired many years ago as part of an eBay purchase.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday 807. To see other contributions go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and follow the links.

A Light From The East