I suppose there were days when the sun shone and the sky had an Axminster Blue tint, times when the leaves were still green and the stone slabs looked like honeyed layers. But I still see the 1970s and 80s as black and white and fifty shades of rain-washed grey. I didn't even have a … Continue reading A Taste Of Honey
Tag: Calendar
Joe’s Cafe And The Search For Artificial Intelligence
I took the photograph back in the early 1980s, and I think it was in Sheffield. I decided to use the very latest AI-driven location identification programmes to confirm this, and I can now announce that today's picture features Joe's Cafe which is in Sheffield .... or Bournemouth, or Pontypool, Wales, or Skibbereen, Ireland, or, … Continue reading Joe’s Cafe And The Search For Artificial Intelligence
The Shape Of History
The raw shape of this scene is not all that different now to what it was when this postcard was first published more than a hundred years ago. Most of these buildings in this corner of Halifax are still in place: there's more traffic these days, of course, and those elaborate tram poles are long … Continue reading The Shape Of History
Documenting History
The development of photography in the nineteenth century provided us with a unique window through which we could view history. Before that, we only had the imagined faces of our ancestors or, if you were lucky, a fanciful artist's portrait or two. By the 1860s, when this little photograph of mine was taken, you had … Continue reading Documenting History
Memories Of Elland
Memories aren't sharp; they blur into shapes and condense into moods. Memories aren't perfect; they're cut and they're edited like some Panorama report. This was Elland fifty years ago, and it seems green and pleasant. It wasn't. It's a memory.
Tri-X
The other day I used Paul Simon's lyrics from his song "Kodachrome" to introduce a colourful picture taken in Huddersfield Open Market. Today's picture is from the same market, but it is anything but colourful. Paul Simon never did write a song called "Tri-X", which is a pity, really.
On The Shore
This photograph is taken from a batch of family photos that once belonged to my great-uncle Albert. The subject may be him - or, more likely, his son-in-law - but it is the composition that stands out. It's a brilliant photo from almost a century ago: whatever your starting point, your eyes are taken on … Continue reading On The Shore
Kodachrome
"They give us those nice bright colours, give us the greens of summers, makes you think all the world's a sunny day" There would have been a time when it would have been Kodachrome and a Nikon camera, but today as I walked through Huddersfield Open Market, all I needed was my smartphone. Oh Yeah!
The Church On The Hill
St Thomas's Church has stood out like some spiritual beacon looking down on industrial Halifax from the hilltop at Claremount since the 1860s. However, in the 1960s, it lost its spire, then its congregation, then its religious status and slowly began to fade behind the ever-spreading hillside woodland. My photo captured it about ten years … Continue reading The Church On The Hill
alanburnett.com 