Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
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.
Keep reading
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
alanburnett.com 