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