The Mermaid
I am one of the few people lucky enough to have access to a family archive of pictures which goes back in time over four generations. I have spent many hours sitting trying to learn something about the people in the pictures, what they were trying to convey in the photos and for whom. Sitting pouring over these beautifully aged photos has given me an appreciation for a look and a style which is very difficult to do in post production software like Photoshop. Some of the photos were water damaged, a fact which gutted both my aunt and my father but which I felt left an indelible quality and beauty.
I have named the following photograph the mermaid. Who the girl is standing on the rocks or where this was taken is a mystery lost in the passing of the years but it was an image that was important enough to someone to save it in the family albums for decades. Perhaps I am where I am today because of the actions of that slender lone figure out on the rocks.
For me these photographs capture a sense of mystery; they come from a time when adventure was a real and tangible thing, when visiting other countries involved danger and far-off exotic places and people. A seemingly simpler and less demanding era, yet one undoubtedly full of it’s own issues and conflicts.
If any of you have access to wonderful old photographs like this one I implore you to put them online and to share the links; send me links and I will do a follow-up review of some of the best.
There is so much magic and history shut up in leaky old attics that it is both an offense to the spirit of that moment long gone and a crying shame.
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