I collect WW1 photo-postcards because I find them haunting.
For me, many reach out at an emotional level, showing wives, sweethearts, parents, brothers, best friends and pals; the human consideration of the war.
They're sepia shaded strangers with familiar faces that resonate from the past.
I find myself wishing them well as I wonder who they were and what became of them!
Tony K
UK
UK
Thats quite a collection Tony. I had a similar experience with a set of glass film slides I bought at York car boot with Woodsy a couple of years ago. The slides were mostly of Scotland, but there were three of a dad with his young son on the beach. It reminded me so strongly of a picture of myself and my dad when I was little and I found it terribly sad that they had been discarded. The slides eventually became the basis of my final poetry diserrtation at University.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think ours is a superficial society where many modern people have little value for the things which bridge us with the past. It's heartwarming to hear that the discarded glass slides you discovered became a conduit connecting a powerful father son memory, recalled and re-lived through poetry and your dissertation. You saw something in the glass slides which others didn't see. A lovely thought, Bill. I appreciate you sharing it. Thank you.
DeleteThese are haunting images Tone and I can see why you collect them. I often see postcards in Charity shops but not old photographs. Where do you find them for your collection? I wonder what we would say to these people in the snapshots if we could speak to them?
ReplyDeleteOver the years I've picked them up at 'Stamp, Coin and Postcard Fairs' and flee markets, Woodsy. They can also be found online, but I like to sought through them myself and actually touch the past. Similar to Bill's thoughts, some seem to silently speak out. If I'm honest, I don't know what I could say to a generation who suffered so much. I'd probably just buy them a beer and raise a respectful glass, thinking of the one who didn't came home, and quietly cry to myself.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it I may well have a couple from my own Parents and Grandparents. At first glance these look like photographs and its only when you turn them over do you realise they're postcards!
DeleteDuring WW1 photo-postcards were a very popular medium, Woodsy. If kept away from sunlight they survive remarkably well for ephemerals that are over a hundred years old :)
DeleteYou're right Tony - superficiality reigns these days. Seeing the slides on the grass at the boot sale, I was reminded that almost every photograph I have of my children from the last 20 years are digital. If the hard drive fails, then all those memories will disappear in a puff of logic. Nobody prints photographs now, they appear briefly on screen or social media and then promptly disappear again. The deluge of new information swamps any individual image, so that we are necouraged to move quickly on to the 'next big thing'.
ReplyDeleteYep, I find it perplexing, Bill. There's a big age gap between our eldest two kids and the youngest. The first two, now adults, are Eighties Kids whose birthdays, holidays and key events fill photo albums and old scarp books. By contract, our youngest, a late arrival born in 2003, has most of her own life events stored on digital media of one sort or another.
DeleteMy daughter regularly buys photobooks online, of curated snaps from our family albums, full of dodgy photos of her mum and the outlaws. Its nice to see them in hard copy.
DeleteMy Missus prints photos from Digital via an online firm called Snapfish. Old school stuff. I agree though, from this generation hence there'll be no more printed photographs and their collective memories will be stored in machines hooked to an ever-burgeoning interweb. Grandfathers will have to pull out a viddyphone to show little ones how they grew up! Not quite as tactile or evocative as a stack of old photographs!
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