Faded faces

I’m really fascinated by old photographs, those that are real snapshots from family albums that have been disregarded by people through death, house clearance amongst other reasons. I remember going to a flea market in Brighton last September where they had boxes upon boxes of old black and white photos for sale. The ones that really caught my eye were the ones from the 1930’s and 1940’s of soliders, posing proudly in their uniforms and with their families, presumably before going off to war. They look so happy, there are big smiles from everyone in the photo, but how were they really feeling? Knowing that they were going away to fight in the trenches, not seeing their families for months, years, if ever again. Despite their big smiles, I couldn’t help but see through to a sadness beneath it all. Perhaps this was the last memory that they had as a family together and it has ended up in a dirty box, having strangers rummage through them and throw them about carelessly.

 Whilst in New York we went into a thift shop in Brooklyn, where there were boxes full of old photos and negatives. This time it was the black and white 5x4 negatives that caught my eye as opposed to the actual photos. Unlike with digital where you can snap to your heart’s content, with a 5x4 camera you only get one or two shots from an image and your shot must be composed and exposed correctly first time.  Anything that the ammeter photographer wanted to photograph must have been very important and significant to them in order for them to go to the trouble to set up and compose the image. Looking at the negatives I wondered what made each moment so special, why they chose this subject and this moment to capture on film. 

Here are the prints, I didn’t worry too much about perfecting the print, only a tiny bit of dodging and burning, it was more the subject that I was excited to see.

The first one is obviously of a wedding, not that exciting but still fun to see all the little details and the smiling couple and proud relatives looking on.

 When I first viewed the negative of this image I thought that it was a Xmas morning scene, but looking closer it is actually a couple opening Wedding gifts, you can see this if you look closely at the design on the wrapping paper. I like the old fashioned clothing, particularly her hat and his thick, black rimmed glasses. I really love the look that the man is giving the female. She is obviously concentrating on opening the presents, maybe shy to look up because she knows that she is having her photo taken? But he is looking straight into face and smiling, looking genuinely happy and in love, it's really sweet. When printing the images, I realised that they were square and my paper was a rectangle and so either the top/bottom or sides had to be cut off. So i experimented with cropping and actually found this image works better portrait than horizontal. You can see the big pile of presents and it cuts out all the negative space either side of them making it feel more intimate, like we are seeing a private moment.

This image of a baby was very striking as a negative, the huge space of the blanket gave the illusion that the baby was wrapped up and peeking out at us, it looked a little disturbing. Although there is still something that I find a little bit creepy about this image, the infant looks a lot more sweet and peaceful than I had first imagined. However this is part of the fun that I find in printing old negatives, you never know how the image is going to turn out, your first impression of it could be completely wrong.