Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
The Beauty Of Shape
What better way to start the second half of the year than with this photograph I took over half a century ago? I’m not sure what went through my mind when I took it, but it has turned out to be one of my favourite photos – part exercise in scale, part composition in grey, and part homage to the beauty of shape.
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Sunny, Happy Days
What a difference a century makes. Warm weather at the end of June 1926 meant that kids at Holy Trinity School in Halifax had their lessons outdoors, “under ideal conditions.” A hundred…
A Grainy Memory
It was the 1980s. It was somewhere in the Lake District, I think. It wasn’t raining – rare for the Lake District – and the light of day was beginning to merge…
Leave The Faces Well Alone
All lovers of old photos are faced with endless decisions about artificial intelligence: when to use it, how much to use it, and whether to use it al all. Don’t ask me…
Another Wall
Another photograph of another Yorkshire stone wall. This one is far more recent, however. It is also in a very different part of Yorkshire. This was taken in the north…
In Halifax
I’m pretty certain that this photograph – taken well over 50 years ago – was taken somewhere in Halifax. It has all the necessary ingredients: an overgrown, stone-cobbled lane rising…
A 1916 Girl
On the back of this sepia portrait of an unknown girl is a studio stamp that states: “W Buckley, Portrait Specialist, 28 August 1916, Regent Square, Blackpool.” There is something…
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