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

 

Happy New Year