Liverpool!

 

This is a wonderful photograph - so much more eloquent than the usual smiling-face mugshot. That's my mother pointing, my brother Roger digging in the sand, and me looking attentively at what she's indicating. I suspect that could be Liverpool as the background suggest the photo was taken in New Brighton. Even the sloping horizon contributes to what is a fabulous composition.

Fishy Shapes

 

Like a cross between Halloween-costumed children and monsters auditioning for Doctor Who, these smokestacks dominated the skyline at Grimsby Fish Docks 40 or 50 years ago. I visited the docks whenever I could and took photographs of what was clearly a way of life living on borrowed time.

Never, Never, So

 

.. And speaking of fakes! No doubt people will recall the time Vincent van Gogh spent in Halifax in the early 1870s, and his fondness of the view from Greetland overlooking the Calder Valley towards Wainhouse Tower. This painting of his dates from that time. I know what you skeptics are going to say: "the tower wasn't completed until 1875". Van Gogh had such an imagination, however.

It Was Never So

This image comes from a 120 year old picture postcard of Halifax, and it is about as fake as any modern AI generated concoction. The colours have been painted in with all the skill of an arthritic canary, and the figures appear to have been randomly stuck on with haste as well as paste. Such images frame our view of the past as a time of clean streets, pretty colours, and blue skies. Beware - it was never so.

 

Skipping The Puddles

 

I've called this "Skipping the Puddles" because there are lots of skips and lots of puddles. It must be over forty years ago that I took the photograph, which means it was probably somewhere in South Yorkshire. I seem to have caught two people climbing over a factory wall, but it is perhaps a little late in the day to issue a Crimewatch appeal for their identification.

Of The Era

 

I may have used this image before on my daily calendar. After six years, I do occasionally repeat myself. I make no apologies; however, it has always been one of my favourite photographs of Halifax. I took it on Rhodes Street in the early 1970s, when large areas of that part of town were being cleared for demolition. For whatever reason, it speaks of the era.

Random Beach

Counting both the photographs I have taken myself over the last seventy or so years and the old photographs I have collected, I currently have some 114,000 stored on my hard disk. Sometimes I like to leave it to chance and use a random number generator to choose an image from this collection for my daily calendar. Today's is one such random choice. All I can tell you about it is that I took it back in May 2013 and I think it was somewhere in North Norfolk.

Down The Sepia Path

 

This is an old sepia photograph, taken from one of the many old album pages that litter my room. Many people believe that the sepia colour that characterises photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the result of fading over time. This isn’t actually the case; sepia toning was specifically introduced to combat the fading that was common in old photographs exposed to light. It later became a fashion statement in its own right, and most Victorian subjects - including this lady - would have preferred the sepia look to black and white.

Cleaning Up

In dating pictures of old Halifax, there are certain events that – rather like the destruction of the dinosaurs in geological times – mark the changeover between major epochs. One such event was the stone cleaning of Halifax Town Hall, bringing about its transition from soot-black to golden-stone, in 1972.

 

Concentrating The Mind's Eye

 

I took this photograph in Sheffield, forty-odd years ago. Could you take a similar photo now? The bin will certainly be gone, replaced by some overgrown plastic box. I'm not sure about the stairs and the railings. Today's photo would be digital, and, by default, in full colour - and that would somehow change the scene. Let's not pretend that black and white was more realistic; it wasn't. The lack of colour did, however, concentrate the eye and the mind.

Small And Wide In The Arctic

At first glance at this old family photograph, you might think something went wrong with the print's dimensions: everything appears far too wide for its own good. However, that was my grandmother, Harriet Ellen Burnett, and she really was very small and very wide. And that was the door of her house on Arctic Parade in Great Horton, Bradford and that was equally small and wide.

Ode To A Gable End

This is a proper gable end, not some half-hearted apology for a wall stuck onto the side of an over-delicate bungalow. It's seen life, this gable end: horses and carts, trams and trolleys, bikes and boats. Some might not see its beauty, but I did when I took this photo fifty-odd years ago - and I still see it today. This gable end was built to last.

Pretty Good

 

Let's start a new month with something pretty. This begins with a photograph I took a few years ago of a bit of land near Upper Edge, Elland, known locally as "The Wilderness". I fed that photograph into an AI machine and instructed it to come up with something interesting. This is the image that came out the other end - pretty good start to June, all told.

Entering Slaithwaite

 

For status and gravitas, you can't beat a triumphal arch. Rome has several, Paris has a famous one, and now Donald Trump is getting in on the act in Washington. Few of them can match the triumphal arch you have to pass under when you enter Slaithwaite in West Yorkshire. Here's a photograph I took the other day just in case Washington wants to copy the design.

This Is My Space

 

I know that look; I know that stance. This chap might be in a shed surrounded by pots of this and jars of that, and I might be in my room, buried under piles of paper and layers of ephemera. The message is the same, however: "This might look like chaos to you, but I know where things are. This is my space. Keep out."

Geometric Ramblings

The cubist painters of the early twentieth century revolutionised art by breaking objects down into geometric, fragmented forms. If Picasso, Georges Braque, and the rest had wanted a real challenge, they could have done a lot worse than coming to Halifax and applying Cubist techniques to Square Church. Once they had finished they could have popped in for a pint at The Triangle Inn.

Up Gog Hill

 

This is a photograph I took at the bottom of Gog Hill in Elland about fifty years ago. Because my in-laws were living near the top of Gog Hill at the time, I assume I was about to walk up the hill - which is a substantial climb at the best of times. Of course, the sun always shone in my youth, so we can assume it was warm. I considered retracing my steps yesterday but quickly abandoned the idea and stayed inside instead.

A Nice Collection

 

This postcard was sent from Budapest to North Wales 126 years ago, during the height of the early twentieth-century postcard-collecting boom. It dates from the period before the postcard backs were divided to accommodate both the address and the message, so any message had to be squeezed onto the front of the card. No problem - after a century and a quarter, the message becomes more interesting than the view.

Bank Holiday Monday

 

What better way to celebrate a Bank Holiday Monday than to stride across the green fields of Yorkshire, leaving the smoke-filled streets behind, and then scale the gorse-clad valley sides in search of a perfect English pub and a foaming pint of ale? Or, alternatively, you can retreat to the safety of your room - free from UV rays and stinging wasps - and tidy up a 56-year-old photograph of the green fields of Yorkshire (the Shibden Valley, actually).

Shared Art

 

These days, if you buy shares in a company, the best you can expect is a pro-forma PDF digital certificate - with all the elegance of a breeze block. Back in the last century, you'd receive a work of art to record your acquisition, with classical figures and semi-naked gods welcoming you into the realm of capitalism. I bought my share certificates as a job lot for a few pence: devoid of property, rich in art.

Waiting For The Cable To Drop

 

This is an old photograph, picked at random from the boxes and drawers of old photographs I live with. There is nothing special about it - I have no idea who Mac and Burbidge were - other than that it sums up everything I love about old photographs. I could no doubt feed it through an AI machine and it would come out looking clean and new ... and somehow false. It's the sepia patina of time that makes it special.

Temple To Steam

 

While we’re on the subject of ancient monuments (see yesterday’s post), what about this fine obelisk? Built as a temple to Steam, the god of industry, it was worshipped by thousands of acolytes who would gather in its shadow daily. Mill chimneys are the monolithic heads of West Yorkshire.

Them And Us

 

Down south, if they find a load of standing stones, they declare it an ancient monument and charge people £30 to look at it. Up north, we simply assume they're there to stop the cows from wandering out of the field.

Waves And Hills

 

I think this photograph of mine of Elland dates from the early 1980s, but I can't remember the exact date (oh, how I wish we had metadata back in those pre-digital days). The theme is timeless: waves of stone-clad industry washing up against the natural Pennine hills. I still travel up and down those steep roads several times a week. Timeless.

An Illustration

 

At what point does a photograph become an illustration? I'm not sure of the answer, but it probably has something to do with tones and lines. This illustration of Halifax Borough Market is based on a photograph I took last year. The simplicity of line and tone makes it look a little like something from a nineteenth century copy of The Illustrated London News. That, however, is a twenty-first century mobile phone shop on the right.

Happy Birthday