Welcome to the Website of Alan Burnett: writer, blogger, collector of old photographs, and devotee of all things pointless and inconsequential.
The End Of The Film
I like to think that, when Bill Brandt walked up Old Lane in Halifax in 1937, he took his famous Snicket in Halifax photo. He then climbed to the top of the steps leading to the railway bridge and took his equally famous Halifax photo. After walking down the other side, he turned and cursed because he had run out of film. Conversely, I had one frame left – so here is the shot Brandt missed. (He would have had to wait…
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Halifax – New York – Halifax
Where can you find Halifax in New York? The answer is on the fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street. There, you will find a copy of…
In The Steps Of Genius
Old Lane in Halifax was the setting for two of the finest photographs of the twentieth century. The fourth frame on my forty-year-old strip of negatives is my rather mediocre recreation of…
Bus On A Bridge
The second image in my strip of six negatives, taken 40 years ago, shows a bus on a bridge. The bridge is, of course, Burdock Way in Halifax. If you…
Lest we Forget
Lest we forget the days when images were chemical stains on translucent cellulose acetate, and photographic imagination was limited by the number of frames left on a roll of film.…
What Goes Around ….
My postcard this week takes us back to a time when political cartoons were considered suitable content for picture postcards. It also takes us back to 1903–04, when the idea…
