PHOTOGRAPHS

Most families have photographs of people, and the places they have lived and visited. When first taken they are often only of interest to the family and their friends. Storing them may even become tedious.

As the years go by, the photos become a slice of social history, as they show the changing faces, fashions and places that were captured by the shutter. The real gems are not the posed studio shots or the ones of people dressed up for special occasions - the treasures are the ones that simply capture a moment of everyday life.

The car that gets in the way as the shutter clicks may be a nuisance at the time but in later years will show how car designs have changed, and its outdated number plates will capture the feel of the era when the photo was taken. The children playing in the street will conjure up a time when cars didn't dominate our environment.

The aprons worn by the women at their doors will show the days when housework dominated their lives.

A single photo will cause us to wonder why we didn't take more at the time, in the same way I wonder why my grandparents didn't buy a dozen houses when they were 'only' £500 each. I think our photos need to be shared.

When I was a child I had a friend who liked nothing better than to persuade my Mum to get out her boxes of old photos. When they came out we knew we were in for an evening of tales of life in wartime Chessington, giggles at bad haircuts and old school uniforms, and a glimpse of the time before we were born. They were never put neatly in albums, or sorted in any way - each was pulled out at random, to be passed round and talked about, decades mingling together as a different subjects were covered : fashion, family likeness, how our house had changed, previous jobs and colleagues, or maybe pets we had loved and lost. All inspired by the photographs.

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