Images Are Magical

For as long as I can remember, I have been in love with images. They offer the ultimate freedom of expression and interpretation, allowing you to explore a moment, place, emotion, or expression in detail. They let you freeze time and make the transient permanent. Images are magical.

Guess The Building

Here’s a fun diversion for a miserable Monday morning: take a photograph of a famous Calderdale building, ask a friendly AI bot to turn it into an architectural drawing, and then ask people to guess which building it’s supposed to be. I’ll post the original photograph - and the location - at the end of the day, in case you want to guess.

Neoplasticism And Halifax Borough Market

The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian was one of the founders of the art movement known as Neoplasticism. His palette was limited to the three primary colours - red, blue, and yellow - along with black, white, and grey. The result was art composed of lines and shapes. As far as I know, Mondrian never visited Halifax, but it is hard not to feel that he might have found inspiration there after looking up at the ceiling of Borough Market.

The End Of The Film

I like to think that, when Bill Brandt walked up Old Lane in Halifax in 1937, he took his famous Snicket in Halifax photo. He then climbed to the top of the steps leading to the railway bridge and took his equally famous Halifax photo. After walking down the other side, he turned and cursed because he had run out of film. Conversely, I had one frame left - so here is the shot Brandt missed. (He would have had to wait a few years for Burdock Way to be built.)

Halifax - New York - Halifax

 

Where can you find Halifax in New York? The answer is on the fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street. There, you will find a copy of Bill Brandt’s 1937 photograph, Halifax - a clear indication that it is regarded as one of the finest twentieth-century photographs. My interpretation, taken forty years ago and the fifth image from my chosen strip of negatives, is but a pale imitation of the original.

In The Steps Of Genius

 

Old Lane in Halifax was the setting for two of the finest photographs of the twentieth century. The fourth frame on my forty-year-old strip of negatives is my rather mediocre recreation of Bill Brandt’s magnificent 1937 photograph, Snicket in Halifax. The original is easy to find online, and it is worth noting that little had changed during the half-century leading up to my photograph of the same snicket.

Halifax

 

Bridge over bridge, concrete over iron, set against a hillside as old as time. Over my nearly eight decades, I’ve travelled widely, but Halifax was, is, and will remain my greatest source of inspiration. This is the third photograph from that strip of negatives taken forty years ago.

Bus On A Bridge

The second image in my strip of six negatives, taken 40 years ago, shows a bus on a bridge. The bridge is, of course, Burdock Way in Halifax. If you look closely, you may see that the bus is advertising even more local editions of the local newspaper. Forty years later, the photograph would have been taken on a mobile phone — which would also have been the platform for local news. The bus, however, would still be there!

Lest We Forget

Lest we forget the days when images were chemical stains on translucent cellulose acetate, and photographic imagination was limited by the number of frames left on a roll of film. This week, I am limiting myself to a single strip of six negatives, all exposed around Halifax some forty years ago. The first image is, as far as I can remember, of Oats Royd Mill in Luddenden, taken before it was badly damaged by fire in 1989.

What Goes Around ....

My postcard this week takes us back to a time when political cartoons were considered suitable content for picture postcards. It also takes us back to 1903–04, when the idea of free trade was being challenged by politicians advocating protectionism and the use of tariffs as an instrument of foreign policy - most notably Joseph Chamberlain, who urged the rest of Balfour’s Cabinet to join him. You would probably find similar cartoons on social media today - plus ça change!

Friendly Fire

 

For the past 848 weeks, Sepia Saturday has offered themes that allow lovers of old photographs from around the world to share their favourite images. This month’s themes are working their way through the elements, and this week’s theme is “fire”.My submission is this rather sweet photograph from, I think, the 1920s, which I have entitled “Friendly Fire”.

The Mist Of Time

Those who know the town of Brighouse can have fun with this picture - which I must have taken sixty or so years ago - trying to work out where I took it from and what the various buildings, fading into the post-industrial mist of time, are. Many have now gone, and most of those that remain have entirely different uses from those they had back in the 1960s.

Standing On The Edge

It seems so long ago - almost another age. The colours and styles may have changed, but then, as now, we stood on the edge and looked out.

Bare Beacon

 

When I look back at the pictures I took of Halifax in the 1960s and ’70s - the town I have always considered home - several things stand out. The town had a greyness then that went beyond an over-reliance on monochrome photography. There were still plenty of mill chimneys breaking up the skyline. Most striking of all, Beacon Hill was bare, devoid of any meaningful vegetation.

Good Taste

Sitting in a restaurant, whiling away the time while the others enjoyed their starters, I began playing with the reflections of the bottles behind the bar. Within a handful of seconds, my photograph had bounced from Thongsbridge to an AI mega-kitchen on the far side of the world, where it was cooked to perfection and served back to me. Good taste.

St Thomas And The Gasworks (Again)

 

This is another of those scenes I kept returning to in the 1960s, and I have several versions of it in my negative archive. Perhaps it was fortunate that I did my best to capture the scene in all its glory, because shortly afterwards, not only was the Gasworks frame demolished, but so too was the central feature: the tower of St Thomas’ Church in Claremount.

Here For The Day

This week, our weekly picture-postcard puzzle takes us to the United States. It is April 1906, and the writer simply tells us that his hand is still improving and that he is “here for the day.” The place in question appears to be the Pensions Building in Washington DC, where Civil War pensions were calculated and administered. The card was addressed to J. Hemmings, Esq., at the corporate headquarters of the Nobel Explosives Company. Make of all that what you will!

Shapes, Shades, And Stories

 

Sometimes you simply go somewhere and take photographs - no theme, no agenda, no expectations. As a record of a day out, it works better than any 5,000-word essay: shapes, shades, and stories.

Enjoy The View

 

I wish I could remember taking this photograph, but I can’t; after all, it was a long time ago. I must have been up Clifton way, looking down over the lower Calder Valley towards Brighouse. If you can’t get to sleep tonight, you could try the industrial West Yorkshire equivalent of counting sheep: counting mill chimneys. Then again, you could just relax and enjoy the view.

Leaving The Shed

 

This 1947 photograph came into my care through family hand-me-downs and shows a retirement party at a Bingley mill in January 1947. It is not clear whether the person retiring is the man or the woman at the centre of the photograph, but I suspect it is Abraham Moore, my uncle’s father, who worked as a weaving-shed manager. To be on the safe side, I have captioned the image “Leaving the Weaving Shed.”

Framed

When you’ve got a good subject - say, a fifteenth-century Grade I parish church - you need a good frame. What better frame for a church steeped in toil and industry than a nineteenth-century railway viaduct? My photo dates from a time when Halifax Parish Church was properly framed; now the subject remains, but the frame has long since been demolished.

Electric Houses And Botany Worsted Suits

 

Two adverts from Halifax newspapers 100 years ago today paint an interesting picture of society in the 1920s. One advert is for new suits, available from Sam Stocks for £5.50. The other advertises a competition to win a new house, fully fitted with electricity, or alternatively, a cheque for £2,000. If we apply the same ratio between the two prices and base it on what I paid for a new suit a couple of weeks ago, the new house would cost £56,000.

Gone And Going

 

It’s probably been sixty years since I took this photograph of the old railway sheds beside North Bridge in Halifax, and a lot has happened since then. The sheds have gone, replaced by a leisure centre that has since disappeared as well. As for the photographer, he is still just about keeping going, although he can no longer jump over a wall to take shots like this.

Fishing For Postcards

This week’s postcard comes from the collection of my great-uncle, Fowler Beanland. It shows the Mechanics’ Institute in Keighley, a building with which he would have been very familiar. It was built in 1853, a few years before he was born, and burnt down in 1962, a couple of years after he died. He no doubt studied there while learning his trade as an iron turner. The card is from David Beanland, who, despite the salutation, was Fowler’s nephew rather than his brother.

Thursday 1st - Saturday 3rd October 2026

 

Monday 28th September - Wednesday 30th September 2026

 

Safely To The Other Side

 

Another way to cross the River Mersey is the method I’ll be using later today: travelling through the Mersey Tunnel. The Queensway Tunnel - the one I’ll be using - was constructed in 1934, the year before this fine old picture postcard was sent. Built at a cost of £8 million, it was the world’s longest road tunnel for the first fourteen years of its existence. A masterpiece of twentieth-century civil engineering, it will hopefully get me safely to the other side.

Ferry Across The Mersey

 

Later this weekend, I will be crossing the River Mersey. To celebrate, here is a photograph taken during a trip across the river more than seventy years ago. Later this year, I hope to make a slightly longer water crossing to be reunited with my brother. For now, we will have to be satisfied with this memory from all those years ago, captured during our “Ferry Across the Mersey.”

The Uses Of Zion

 

Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. I eventually narrowed it down to a building on Westfield Terrace in Sheffield, which has had a colourful history: it has served as a chapel, part of the old Royal Hospital, offices and, more recently, apartments. Fine buildings should have many uses; it is good to see them adapted over time.

Municipal Pride

The third element of my Dewsbury triptych is the rather beautiful Dewsbury Town Hall, built in 1886 by local architects Henry Hottom and George A. Fox. It dates from a time when municipal pride was competitive, and local towns tried to outdo one another in the scale and beauty of their public buildings. For a town of its size, Dewsbury would take a lot of outdoing!

Dewsbury Top And Bottom

 

The second of my Dewsbury triptych celebrates that moment - which all photographers know well - when you suddenly catch sight of an alignment of objects or an idiosyncratic collection of shapes, and snap away with enthusiastic abandon. Your companions look at you as though you’ve taken leave of whatever sense you had - but you have spotted a top market and some mannequin bottoms.

Stone Heroes

When brothers Robert and William Machell built their new mill in Dewsbury in 1874, they chose to incorporate four finely carved stone portraits into the fabric of the handsome Cloth Hall Mill. Two depicted themselves - upper right and lower left - while the others portrayed the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli (upper left), and Richard Cobden, the former radical Liberal MP for the West Riding. I stopped to say hello to all four while walking around Dewsbury last week.

Rooftops And Chimneypots

 

I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. Add a decent collection of chimney pots to the scene, and you almost have a work of sculpture.

Reversing Requires Remark Methinks

Is there anything better than an old picture postcard - with a dramatic scene of waves breaking over the Blackpool seashore on one side and a cryptic message on the other The card appears to have been sent by my grandfather, Albert Beanland, to his brother, Fowler Beanland. The message reads, “Methinks remark requires reversing.” Make of that what you will.

Look, Duck And Vanish

 

At the outbreak of World War II, my father (on the left in the photograph), who was in a reserved occupation, joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). He always claimed that LDV stood for “look, duck and vanish”. The organisation later became the Home Guard, and he was tasked with defending Baildon Bridge, near Bradford, in case the Germans sailed up the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?

Half A World Away

 A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. I took the photograph more than half a century ago, and more than half a world away.

Heritage

 I've only ever worked in a mill as a holiday job while at university - really, I was just playing at it. But I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson of mill workers. Threads of yarn bind my genes together, and bobbins form the bones of my ancestry. I took this photograph at Bradford Industrial Museum. The machines stood still and silent, but history roared through the building.

Woodwork

I'm not quite sure how I acquired this photograph. I don't appear in it, and it isn't my school. None of that matters, however: the scene rings more bells than a school clock. I spent many an unhappy hour dowelling a dovetail joint (or whatever it was) and creating a footstool that eventually collapsed the first time anyone sat on it. Ah, woodwork!

The Collector

 

There is a pleasure in collecting old photographs of unknown people. They are people who long ago departed this world, leaving behind only a few fading family memories and the occasional faded photograph. We get to shine a light on these forgotten faces and imagine what might have been.

Tired And Grainy

I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality. I don’t care.

Swift Sorrow

 

“Sorry I could not see you this morning” was the brief message from FW to Mr S. Mellor of Leeds in July 1903. The choice of picture postcard is an interesting one: not only does it depict a fine Victorian building, but it also happens to be my old school. Most interesting of all, however, is the fact that a postcard sent in the morning could be delivered the very same day!

Questions, Answers

 

I have no idea who this group of women is or why so many of them are dressed in a similar style. You can speculate to your heart’s content and still probably come nowhere near a convincing answer. Even the most powerful AI systems available can only suggest that they are “likely to be members of a women’s society or club.” Yet that is the beauty of old photographs: they pose questions but rarely provide answers.

To The Saloon

Just one of the many decorative plaques found outside the truly magnificent Black Friar pub on Queen Victoria Street in London. The decorations inside are even more spectacular, making the pub an essential stop for any visitor to London. I first discovered it more than 50 years ago, and I still visit every time I am in the capital.

Georgie Girl

I saw this lady at the Ferens Gallery in Hull. I asked her permission to take the photograph and she voiced no objections. She is Georgie, the wife of the artist Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928). She is rather beautiful.

Land, Sea And Sky

 

Skegness, 1982: Out there somewhere lies the sea. Somewhere behind us is the land. Between the two stretches an endless series of sand-filled boundaries - land and sea, sea and sky - inhabited by that hardiest of annuals: the seaside holidaymaker.

Bus Stop At The End Of The World

This is another example of my somewhat imaginative use of captions to mask the fact that, after the best part of fifty years, I can’t remember exactly where I was when I took this photograph. No doubt it was somewhere in West Yorkshire, where I found a rather isolated bus stop - hence: “Bus stop at the end of the world.”