Last month I was working with test pieces which explored a single image of a boy and a cat. I investigated uncontrolled glitch art and then moved my efforts using manual computer edits as I wanted to exercise more control. I then considered the scale and presentation of these pieces. As I was working I wondered about presenting photographs from my growing collection of old album images. Could I present these as part of my project either unchanged or perhaps with minimal alterations to suit my project idea? How would such works sit? Should I arrange a collection or present a single image? What of scale, enlarged or at the real size of the original image?

Below I will show a selection of these old album photographs although immediately I have to point out that what I show are my photographs of the original images. Along with the works I will present a desription of what these pictures say to me. These photographs are unique and have a special feel. If I destroyed such a photograph, there would be no replacement and, other than through my copies, that person would vanish from sight. These photographs speak to me of loss in different ways; loss of these people’s names, their connection with place or family, the interruption of familial memory and of these people’s place with the story of their lives. These photographs express the very crux of liminality of death as viewed through photography.

I also have some objects associated with death, some brooches and a locket with a tiny photograph and a lock of hair. I have photographed these and like the album images I mention above, I present these in a very simple form free of the often severe adjustments to contrast which I often use.

I list the actual size of original photographs.

The photograph above was taken by Smallcombe of Baker Street in London. It shows a baby upon what I assume to be the mother’s knee. The baby is quite sharp and has its eyes open so I assume that the child is dead. The baby is photographed in long white gown, perhaps a christening gown? The mother’s head is not part of the picture. When I first saw this image it looked to me like the folds and drapes of the mother’s dress and the child’s gown were fabrics in the interior of a coffin. The mother’s dress as the sides and the child’s robe stretching to fill the floor of the coffin. The photograph has a haunting quality. I wonder what the photographer thought as he took this image. Why is the mother’s head missing and why is image presented with edge of mother and background fading away to nothing? I assume that this was intentional and it not due to fading or aging. I have left some slight mould near where the mother’s head would have been almost as a nod to her presence. The child seems to be fully in the liminal threshold already distant from the mother. Slipping from sight. It an image which speaks to me of the view from a different perspective where things linked with life are fading.

This photograph shows a boy and a girl leaning against a tree with other tree trunks in background and darker space leading deeper into the woods. The photograph has a bold 1cm border with scalloped edge. On the back of the print someone has written, “fur Max + Kathe”. This photograph was in a series I bought from Germany. Other photographs in this group were dated from the 1930s. I have darkened all of the areas behind the children. As if the children as going deeper into the woods or have come out to look at us one last time. The children place one hand each on the tree trunk as if in communion with the trees. I did some work with fellow student, Caroline Black, where this commune with the trees was part of our shared work. I imagined the boy and girl as Hansel and Gretel which is a fascinatating and dark tale thought to be based on fact where because of starvation, people abandoned their children in the forests. This piece further explores the ideas we played with in our shared work.

The image above shows a photograph of 2 old ladies set in album which uses brown paper. I show size above for the photograph of the ladies although my image showing half of the photograph before and after is bigger. The women in this image are dressed in long, dark dresses and hats. The image itself is dark and I wondered if there was an element of mourning wear about their dress. One of the women smiles for photographer while the smaller and older woman looks sterm. The photograph seems to be the last in the roll of film and a bold line cuts off the right hand side of photograph with 2942 written on film. This bold line made me think of the liminal boundary. The photograph of 2 unknown people who are now dead and forgotten and have moved beyond that white line. In the liminal sense related to death, who might have written that number and what might it mean? I wondered if it might be a ticket number to cross the River Styx. I have photographed the album deliberately cutting off the picture before and after the 2 ladies. I wanted this to appear to be like a production line.

I have used this photograph before but wanted to show it in context. The photograph of the child is presented in a fold upcard with Santa on the front cover. Opening the card, I find a hand written message, “To Aunty Jean and Uncle Cecil with all my love. From Baby Andrew”. Folded that card measures 15 x 10cm and unfolded 15 x 22.5cm. The photograph and card is very dirty and marked. I can remove the photograph and see a cleaner colour both in card and in the corners of the photograph. There is no date or other mark on the back of the photograph so we are left to wonder about Aunty Jean and Uncle Cecil who appeared to keep this card for a long time for it to attract so much dirt. Was picture well handled perhaps by cousins or did Jean and Cecil have no children? What became of Baby Andrew that this picture of hims as a child survived? Did he get sick or die and so the image became very precious? This is what many do when presented with photographs with a limited story. We invent things to fill the gaps, perhaps built from our own experiences.

This picture is all about the tear for me. Who or what was in other half of the photograph. Why was photograph torn and why so roughly? There is a partial message on the reverse which makes little sense as it is incomplete but I decided not to include message as the simple fact of the tear without words was enough for me. The boy looks towards the unknown. Unknown for us, not for him. Is he looking out of window or is there a figure there in that gap? Yet if a figure there is no sense of contact between the boy and the other. The boy is isolated, torn apart from something which hovers just out of sight. The tear is a liminal boundary.

I bought this locket in an online auction. I think it from Victorian era so is over 100 years old. The case is in some kind of metal and is patterned front and back. Inside is what looks at first glance like a torn photograph of a young woman from the shoulder up wearing a wide brimmed hat. On closer inspection, a small pale image of a baby has been placed next to the woman. The ephemeral nature of this pale image of the child speaks to me of the fragility of a young life around which no stories exist and few memories created. My picture shows the locket open and on other side from the photo of the woman is a lock of blonde hair. The woman in the photograph has dark hair so is the lock of hair from the child? I wonder about this locket. It is very fine with a loop for a chain to be worn around neck. Was the woman and child memorialised for her husband or maybe a sister or her mother? It makes me wonder what happened. Did the child and mother die in childbirth? What stories can I build and how can I fill in the blanks from such an object shorn from it’s home and family?

It was a change for me producing these works where I have consciously tried not to put in too much. I try to keep the unspoken story in each image fresh and without making anything too obvious. The words above are my own sense of meaning but I imagine others will have their own take. I will seek peer feedback on these works and will also look at framing and how these images would look if grouped together. I might create a small digital exhibition to gain insight in how such works might look and feel.