Friday, July 6, 2012

Keep the home fires burning...

I've always found photographs to be fascinating.  They're little bits of history, captured with light and chemicals onto paper.  It's kind of like magic, really.  Add to that my love of history and an overblown sense of romanticism, and I think you can get a fair idea of why one of my hobbies is to collect old photographs.

But not just any old photos, oh no!  I'm very particular about which sort.  I only collect portraits of World War I soldiers.

You'd be surprised how many there are out there, languishing away in second hand shops or sold like trading cards on online auction sites.  You can get them for as cheap as a couple of dollars, or as expensive as several hundred.  So many of them, in varying conditions, but each and every one of them a little mystery.  Who what he?  What was his life like?  Did he die in the war, or did he come home?  How did his photo end up being passed around like this rather than holding a place of honour in someone's family photo album?

I think the reason I started collecting them is that I hated the idea of these pictures of these poor, unnamed boys just floating around out there, homeless and unwanted.  I just wanted to take them all in and, even if I can't give them back their names, the least I can do is give them a place.

Each of these boys lived, loved, laughed, cried and died, and the idea that they've just been shuffled off to some dusty old box somewhere, then sold in an estate sale or something makes me sadder than I can say.  I can't help feeling like I'm making a difference by finding and preserving them.

If you also take into consideration how expensive photos were back then it means even more.  It's not like today where you can take a hundred photos on a digital camera and then get rid of the ones you don't want later.  Back then, each photo was an event, carefully planned and executed.  Each photo mattered.

When I tell some people about my boys they ask me if I don't think it's a little morbid.  After all, I'm collecting photos of people I don't know, who aren't related to me, and who in all likelihood died almost a hundred years ago.  I suppose they're right, it is a little maudlin.  But at least I'm not as bad as the post mortem photograph collectors!

There's a huge market on E-Bay for post mortem photographs, and a lot of them go for quite a lot of money.  Sure I collect photos of people who are dead, but at least I'm not collecting photos of dead people!  It's an important distinction to make!

NB.  All the pictures on this post are from my collection.  Each is of an unnamed soldier which I found and took in.  If you think you recognise one of them, please let me know.  I'd love to be able to return them to their families.

19 comments:

  1. I love that you collect those photographs! What a tribute and a showing of great respect to those soldiers of WWI!

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    1. Thank you! I like to think that they'd be happy to know that someone still cares.

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  2. What a great thing to collect! I had to stop collecting, except for my sporks. I was getting out of hand.

    I still find the random old photo and must have it. I have a great one of a bunch of '50s ladies on a bowling league. It's one of my favorites.

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    1. I find photos are a great thing to collect if you have limited space. They really don't take up much.

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  3. I love looking at these, put up more!

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    1. I'll have to scan some more of them and put them up. Who knows, maybe some of them will find their families!

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  4. Very cool! I love old photos, too. I love staring at them, trying to figure out who that person was and imagining what they were like, what happened to them after the photo was taken, etc. I don't collect them, but now you have me intrigued!

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    1. It's such an easy hobby to fall into. They're so cheap in second hand shops you just buy them, and the next thing you know you've got boxes of them!

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  5. I love these old pictures. But my horror loving side kicks in. I always seem to think of some scary past for the subjects of the pictures... Or that the photo itself is haunted or cursed. Yea, I'm weird like that. :o)

    Hugs!

    Valerie

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    1. Oh crap, now I'm going to start imagining they're all haunted by the ghosts of dead soldiers ... and the lights are off and I'm sitting in the dark. This is going to be interesting trying to get to bed without freaking out.

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    2. Well... Hang on now. No need to freak out. They could totally be good ghosts. :oD

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  6. This is a fascinating hobby. Who knows their stories?

    Were they in Galipoli, or did they serve in France? the mind races

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    1. Sometimes I try to work out what rank they were or what army they belonged to, but it's hard especially seeing as how many of them were obviously taken just after they'd signed up, before they'd been given all their badges and other paraphanalia.

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  7. These are beautiful.
    By the way, I would collect post-mortem photography. My nieces an I are big fans. It's morbid, I know. I still don't fully understand why it was done.

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    1. I have to admit, I find postmortem photos interesting too ... but I decided not to go there. I'm far too inclined towards obsessing about morbid things, and that could only end badly for me.

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  8. I think this is a wonderful thing to do, not morbid or maudlin at all. I always feel sad too when I see old photos for sale in some second-hand store, little bits of unhonoured history.

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    1. That's exactly how I feel. It's like they need someone to show that they give a damn.

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  9. This is so neat that you do this; it is too bad you don't collect WW2 ones because I think we have some here we could send you. You know, I think the reason pictures end up in estate sales or secondhand shops, etc is because people don't know who the heck are in those pictures when they are going through things of their parents when their parents pass and what do you do with them? That's our dilemma, that's why I'm a proponent these days of marking pictures. Hubby's parents passed end of 2011; we have lots of pictures we have no idea who the people are in the pictures, so what to do?? Everyone who might know who is in them have passed. So we're either shredding them or now that I'm on strike and not doing anything with all the junk here they just sit. Conversely, I'm working on getting all our pictures labeled.

    fascinating thing to do though!!!

    betty

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    1. That's why I made a project of scanning and labelling all our family photos a few years back. Had to ask around about a few of them, but in the end there were only a handful that we couldn't identify.

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