I was going through my boxes of photographs to find nice ones for my brother’s memorial service. While I was doing that, so many thoughts went through my mind, and not all of them about the memories.
- Photographs from the 1970s with the textured matting really did not last well.
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2. Those old photograph albums with the sticky backing and cover sheets absolutely ruined photographs. They replaced photo corners (below) which were a faff but way better long-term
3. Studio photographs were really big up to the 80s or so. There are so many studio photographs of grandparents, parents and us as kids. I guess that was when cameras were less common and more expensive. These were of my mother
4. Some photographs were really bad. Blurry and with heads cut off. You had to ration your 12/24/36 roll of film, developing was expensive, and you had no idea what your photograph looked like until you had them developed.
5. Black and white photographs were often much better than colour ones. This isn’t a good photograph by any means but I love the contrast.
6. Some photographs taken in the 1960s were really good and have lasted very well. This one from 1964 was on photo card.
When I moved to Sweden, I found that photograph albums were really heavy and I had quite a few, so I put all my favourite photos in boxes and discarded the rest. I was sorry to see the very old photograph albums go – they had leather covers which were tied with glossy ropes so they could expand. The covers were embossed with the dates. The pages were inky black card stock and the captions were written by my parents in silver pen. The newer ones from when I was a teenager were cheap with the plastic sticky pages (uck), and the newest ones had slots where you could slip in standard-sized photographs.