You can't look at the papers these days without seeing it: pointless vandalism, violence, murder. The kids these days - with their social media and lives of material comfort. It was never like that when I was young, back in the 1950s when there was national service, discipline in home and school, and policemen still … Continue reading The Kids These Days
Author: Alan Burnett
Found 1 : Walking With Confidence
FOUND 1 : The joy of found photographs is that, whilst they provide a visual superstructure, you are free to construct your own backstory on their framework. It’s like an exercise in painting by numbers; where motives, emotions, and destinies are the colours available.
Home 4 : Stone And Sweat
Halifax in the 1970s. Carpet mills rub sticky shoulders with toffee factories, and there isn’t a nail bar in sight. The colourful Quality Street images were for tin lids: these streets were cobbled in stone and sweat.
Kathleen Courtney
Kathleen Courtney was an Edwardian actress who starred in a variety of shows and pantomimes during the first decade of the twentieth century. If she had been alive now, she would have had a large Twitter and Facebook following, but given her time of popularity, her photograph graced an endless series of Edwardian picture postcards.
Away 1 : Fish And Chips On The Front
AWAY 1 : There used to be home and away. Home was where you lived fifty-one weeks of the year. Away was your week at the seaside. This, however, was quite a late shot: the give away is that the fish and chips are in polystyrene boxes. By the 1980s, away was more likely to … Continue reading Away 1 : Fish And Chips On The Front
Home 3 : Bus Stop In Halifax
It's a grainy old photograph of a bus stop in Halifax. When I took it fifty-odd years ago, I'm not sure what I thought I was taking. In retrospect (one of the most powerful lenses available to any photographer) I captured a slice of social history. There is something about the confident walk of the … Continue reading Home 3 : Bus Stop In Halifax
Primitives
There were a lot of primitives in my family : my great uncle Arthur was a prominent primitive, as were the Clayton cousins before they defected to the Plymouth Brethren. This badge, I suspect, belonged to my father - who grew up a couple of streets away from the Great Horton Primitive Methodist Chapel in … Continue reading Primitives
Halls, Mills, Rows And Graves
My daily calendar images go on, even though my walls are now full and my calendar holder is overflowing. The last four days has seen an eclectic gathering of cloth halls, satanic mills, rotten rows and graveyard statues. As the calendar images appear each day they are a bit like digital tarot cards, spelling out … Continue reading Halls, Mills, Rows And Graves
Family 1 : Miriam In London
It's a far from perfect photograph: the composition is unconventional, the focus is unsteady and my Uncle Frank's finger seems to have obliterated the bottom corner of the shot: but still it is one of my favourite family photographs. Frank Fieldhouse took the photograph whilst on a trip to London with his wife-to-be Miriam Burnett in August … Continue reading Family 1 : Miriam In London
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