Found pictures

When I was quite little and starting to show an interest in history and stories my Big Nanna fetched out all of her newspapers from the war years up till the Queen's Coronation. I pored over them. The pictures and the text, trying to make sense of it all. I loved the adverts and the funny little mentions of things in the corners of pages. Later that same day, we visited the other grandparents and my Little Nanna couldn't believe that my Big Nanna was letting me dwell over this old fashioned, morbid stuff. What did the bairn want with thirty year old newspapers? She let me cut out a few photos I liked (crowds at the King's funeral, which I pasted into my Silver Jubilee scrapbook), and then binned the rest of the papers.

I was always someone who loved looking at other people's old photos. Going through old albums, trying to piece the stories together. Our own family albums seem a bit threadbare in places, what with one thing and another. Some of the pictures I've inherited from my Big Nanna's side are filled with unfamiliar people. In photos from only forty years ago, the faces are starting to become unnameable, unknown. The stories and connections haven't lasted as long as the visual record.

I'm very drawn to other people's snaps. In various junk shops and tabletop sales I've bought bags and boxes of other people's ancient photos. I can't bare the thought of them becoming landfill some day. These unique pictures. Look at these three examples, all of which came from a miniature suitcase I bought in an antique store in the Yorkshire Dales last January. The thing was stuffed with about a hundred years' worth of photos, and a few letters and post cards. It was a kind of novel in kit form.

I love the faces in photos like this. The looks that people give each other when they should all be facing front and smiling for posterity. Look at that goofily grinning lad in his long socks and suit and tie, standing beside the tall girl in the wedding photograph. And the groom who, at first glance, seems to have hold of the page boy's ear. I'm intrigued by the lady at the very back, obviously standing on a scullery chair and wearing the fanciest hat out of everyone in the family. Her face is mostly in shadow. You can see she thinks she's a cut above the rest.

I wonder if everyone in the suitcase belongs more or less to the same family? If it's a multi-generational saga I paid seven pounds for, and rescued from the brink? The case was shoved amongst heaps of old comics and enyclopedias. It had been opened and ransacked and cast aside.

That living room looks like it's the 1960s now. Anaglypta walls and pictures framed in white plastic. The staring eyes of the man in the armchair are a bit worrying. Everyone's staring or smiling in different directions. It looks like an older sister has come to visit. Who's is the teddy? It looks a bit worn. Maybe she's brought it for the kid. But that woman on the arm of the chair cradles it oddly like a baby. The bear looks bemused.

That couple on the Prom look a bit mithered to me. They should be enjoying themselves, but it looks like they've had words. Are they brother and sister? Or a couple who've grown to look just like one another, with same dark eyes and concerned grimace? Old-fashioned-looking people, my Big Nanna would have called them. Smart-looking and togged up for a day in the sea air.

Anyone else collect stuff like this? And pore over the minutiae? Is it just me? Is it morbid and strange like my Little Nanna said?