Edwardian AI

 

This early twentieth century picture postcard image of the approach to Halifax Railway Station has the look of something that has been created by a cut-price AI image colourising programme. It wasn't; it was created by the Edwardian equivalent, a cut-price studio assistant with instructions to make the hills green, the sky blue, and the horses look happy. It wasn't true, of course, but anyone who has been within a hundred miles of Halifax will instantly recognise the scene.

Real People, Real Lives

 

Whilst photographs may start out life as things that are intensely personal - this is Aunty Vera, this is our holiday - after a century or more pressed in an album and becoming sepia with age and neglect, they become things of interest to us all. The scene, the clothes, who is there (and who isn't): this is the stuff of history. These are not idealised portraits of kings and potentates; these are real people living real lives a century ago.

Just Messing

 

Why do we take photographs? Despite a lifetime of taking them, I am no closer to finding an answer. It's partly about wanting to capture a moment or maybe share a visual thought, but that is only part of the answer. I was walking the dog yesterday and stopped to take a photograph. "What are you doing?" she asked as she sniffed a leftover slice of pizza near a rubbish bin. "Just messing", I replied.

Three For The Price Of One

 

I wanted something cheery for Friday the 13th - there is enough bad luck and misery going on around us at the moment without me adding to it. We also have a Sepia Saturday prompt this week that features family groups, so here is my brother (left), my mother, and I (I'm the cute one on the donkey). And as we are approaching Mother's Day, this is for you, Gladys. Happy, family, and mother: three for the price of one.

Nostalgia Noir

 

I can vaguely remember taking this photograph of Broad Street in Halifax from what must have been the top of the Bowling Alley in the late 1960s. It was back in the days of slow films and fast cars. You'd have to acquire a special Photoshop filter to get such crude results from even the most challenged smartphone today. They'd probably call the filter "Nostalgia Noir".

Mondrian's Market

 

Black and white, light and dark: Bradford's new Darley Street Market seemed to present photo opportunities with all the enthusiasm of an overstocked trader's stall. There were loads of straight lines - Piet Mondrian goes to Market - but there was also a slightly bleached quality to it, almost as though Hockney himself had visualised it.

Do Seagulls Screech In Cleethorpes?

 

Whenever I look back at the photos I took in Cleethorpes in the 1980s, I am reminded of the trauma caused by the gradual loss of my hearing during that decade. For whatever reason, I seemed to be drawn to open spaces, to that hinterland between land and sea where vision was king and hearing didn't matter. No doubt the seagulls screech in Cleethorpes, but I never heard them.

Hope

 

Yes, it's a bit dark, but the world is a bit dark at the moment. The question has to be: are the steps leading us into or out of the darkness? I took the photograph on Hope Hall Terrace in Halifax. Enough said.

Spring And All Souls

 

The panel which I featured a couple of days ago, showing Edward Akroyd laying the foundation stone for All Souls' Church, is nothing compared to the rather grand bronze statue of Colonel Akroyd of which it forms a part. Indeed, the statue itself is nothing compared to All Souls' Church, which it stands at the side of. Last week's spring sunshine showed them both at their very best.

The Girl With The Throwaway Glance

 

19th century photography is photography of the constrained: studio photography of fixed poses, fixed smiles and fixed emotions. The twentieth century brought cheaper cameras and that meant photography of the people by the people. Of the people leaning against a wall with arms folded, of the girl with the throwaway glance, of the dog snoozing in the shade.

Tired Souls

 

Right next to the Grade 1 listed All Souls' Church in Halifax, there is a statue of the Halifax mill-owner, social reformer, Member of Parliament and church-builder, Edward Akroyd. On the plinth of the statue are a number of decorative panels showing key events in his lifetime, one of which is the laying of the foundation stone for the church in 1856. The panel is now somewhat worn, weather-beaten, tired and forgotten. Tragically, so is the church it commemorates. 

Courage Brewing

 

This was Courage's Anchor Brewhouse, which was next to Tower Bridge in London, back in the 1970s. When I took the photograph, breweries were still big and located in the heart of our towns and cities. These days, breweries are either of the micro variety, or they are formless features on out-of-town industrial estates. As for the Anchor Brewhouse, you can now buy a small apartment there for as little as £5 million!

Droning On

 

These days you would just launch a drone, but back in the 1980s we didn't have drones (probably a good things seeing what else drones can do). If you wanted an aerial photograph like this one of Upperthorpe in Sheffield, you had to construct a brutalist concrete labyrinth (aka Kelvin Flats), climb to the very top, and take your photo. I like to think it was worth the climb.

Forsooth

 

Shakespeare Street, Halifax : A lane obscure, yet bearing a name of renown, once did serve as a stately portal to a playhouse, a haunt for souls who sought diversion and wisdom. Long hath it languished in adversity, and now is it haunted by sots and knaves.

Britannia In The Trees

 

Britannia has sat on top of the rather ornate former bank at the end of Elland Bridge for 133 years. You might think she'd get bored, but I suspect she enjoys the ever-changing view. I've been regularly taking her photograph for the last 56 of those years. I, too, enjoy the view. Here she is on the first day of Meteorological Spring, 2026.

Prescience

 

I took this photograph a couple of days ago, gave it a title, and scheduled it in for my calendar for the 1st of March. Prescient, or what?

Still Collecting

 

My passion for collecting old photographs recognises few bounds, and a few years ago I managed to acquire a small collection of the original negatives of "stills" from British films from the 1940s and 50s. Such photographs were taken during filming in order to prepare the publicity photos that would be displayed outside cinemas. You might think it is an odd thing to collect, but there again, I'm an odd person.

Times Certainly Change

 

Getting somewhat annoyed the other day by some toxic pronouncement by a global potentate, I banged my fist down on my desk, and my smartwatch informed me that it looked as if I had taken a fall and that it would send for an emergency ambulance. Just think, sixty years ago I would have had to catch a bus to Halifax and find some cast-iron street hydrant in order to achieve the same ends. Times certainly change.

Sheffield Shapes

 

I took the photograph back in the early 1980s, and I messed around with it early yesterday. It snowed a lot back in the early '80s, and I wandered up and down the back streets of Sheffield taking photographs. It was the shapes that attracted me then, and they still attract me now. Sheffield shapes.

Any Lane

 

My photograph dates back to the early 1970s and shows one of those streets near the bottom of Lister Lane and Hopwood Lane in Halifax. The precise location doesn't matter - it could be any lane in almost any northern town: with cobbled streets and an obelisk of a mill chimney.

Street Photography

 

These days, this photograph would come under the heading of "Street Photography". When I took it over half a century ago, it came under the heading of "Using The Last Few Shots On A Film Up Before It Was Developed." These inconsequential shots of random scenes are always the most interesting when viewed from the perspective of "the future": their dearth of subject and richness of background provide a unique view of the past.

Treasured Map

 

My brother contacted me from the other side of the world yesterday to suggest that my "monumental sculpture" photo was not taken in Sowerby Bridge. I have since been able to persuade him that it was. His memory of Sowerby Bridge and the Calder Valley is not what it used to be, so here is a map to remind him: a map drawn and published by him 59 years ago!

Monumental Sculpture

 

One should be able to nominate buildings as items of monumental sculpture, thus ensuring their preservation not for what they contain, but simply for the way they look, the shape they make, and the emotions they engender. I would like to nominate this group of buildings in Sowerby Bridge. Let's pickle them in aspic and sell little plastic models of them in souvenir shops throughout the land.

On The Slopes

Photography was made for groups. Get a group together - be it a group of friends, family, fellow workers, or ten-pin bowlers - and one of the first reactions is to get out a camera and record the moment for posterity. Group Photographs is one of the themes for this week's Sepia Saturday, and my contribution is this group of skiers in Switzerland in 1926.