This view of Elland is taken from an old picture postcard, published more than 120 years ago. Of course, Elland has changed; most of those mill chimneys have gone, and blocks of flats stand where back-to-back houses once clung to the hillside. The river remains, and those roads that either snake along the valley bottom … Continue reading Snakes And Branches
Author: Alan Burnett
Enjoy The Music
A family sat outside a cottage relaxing and listening to music streaming from a wind-up gramophone. It's a classic "found photo" - dripping with detail and asking more questions than any government census form. We'll never get answers, but that doesn't matter: sit back and enjoy the music.
Messing About
I've been messing about again, starting the new year as I mean to go on. Those who are familiar with these parts might recognise Halifax Minster somewhere in there and the mighty spire of Square Church. The rest isn't really a photograph and it certainly isn't art - it's just messing about.
Digging For Memories
This is my father digging the back garden at our house in Northowram back in the late 1950s. He might as well have been digging for memories because there are so many of them in this picture: that lethal asbestos hut, those granite sets liberated from the nearby quarry, and that youth perched on the … Continue reading Digging For Memories
Keeping Watch
I've been taking this picture for 60 years. I've watched the names change, and I've seen the stone soot-black and bleached pale. I've seen the Hebble flow fast and slow. I've seen carpets and spreadsheets, dyers and diners. Here's hoping for another year to keep watch over this glorious Halifax.
Musical Conflagration
It must have been the same day as the "Fire In Halifax" photos I featured earlier this week as this image is on the same strip of negatives. This, however, is a musical conflagration courtesy of a brass band in People's Park, Halifax. By the look of things, the band outnumbered the audience.
Brutalist Geometry
I think I took this photograph in Kelvin Flats in Sheffield, but it was a very long time ago, and I never kept proper notes. So here I sit, 45 years later, trying to retrace my footsteps, which is a bit like trying to solve a problem in brutalist geometry.
Market Days
Brighouse is in the process of getting a new market. My photograph isn't of the old market - it's of the even older market. I'm not sure what the new building will turn out like, but I doubt whether there will be a corrugated iron roof nor tarpaulins stretched over banana boxes.
Life Preservers
I can never get over the ability of old photographs to capture and preserve life. This photo was probably taken during World War II. I have no idea who the subject was, but that doesn't matter. That moment of introspection, that moment when the wind caught her hair, will live as long as images are … Continue reading Life Preservers
