Imaginary Prospecting

So here we are again: locked down and searching for ways of occupying ourselves between box sets. Next to my desk I have a suitcase full of old orphan photographs. These are photographs of unknown origin, things I have bought by the box full, job lots of memories. Whenever I have nothing better to do – and the whole point of retirement, indeed the whole joy of it, is never having anything better to do – I dip into the suitcase and go prospecting for images. I am not looking for Uncle Jim or Cousin Ada (by definition the subjects of these photographs, most of which are eighty or ninety years old, are nameless), I am looking for pleasing images. Like any kind of prospecting, success is not guaranteed and pictorial nuggets only occasionally come to the surface. That’s half the fun.