By: Andrew Taft

Andrew Taft — Sat, 16 May 2020 07:57:38 +0000

Hello Michael, your article on your old family photos was of great interest. Two years ago I digitised and polished the 450 or so black and white family photos inherited from my parents. They spanned from 1885 to the late 1960s. Some were faded beyond recognition but came up well in Paint Shop Pro. The result was an eclectic mix of three generations. My parents took a great many pictures with their box camera and my Father took up photography in the 1960s, so our family is well documented. I filled three very large albums with the photos but at the back of my mind was the nagging thought – who’s going to look at them. When young, my sister and I would often pore over the photos at my parents’ house with only have a fleeting curiosity about the dated characters. I was in my early seventies before my curiosity was sufficiently piqued to take a deeper interest. For now the albums sit in the bookcase waiting to be discovered. This project has served one very useful purpose for my twin sister and I, and that is not just to put names to faces but to inspire us to get curious about these peoples’ lives, where they came from, their livelihoods, and how they integrated into the bigger picture of our family tree, and in a funny sort of way to ‘get to know them’.

Comments on: Who is in your old photo album?

By: Andrew Taft