vintage photography

Over the years many fantastic family photographs have been copied using the photograph copying service. The value is, of course, priceless to the family. It’s a historical document that helps connect to to the past and to understand where we come from. It can often be the case that the photograph is the only visual record of an individual or group of people. Families, servicemen and even the occasional villain have been through the scanner and digital archived.

Documenting Family

Sadly though there is a tendency to disregard family history as not that important. David Bailey in his foreword to Linda McCartney’s 1992 book ‘Sixties: Portrait of an era‘ mentioned that he told Linda to take fewer photographs of her family, including Paul MacCartney, and concentrate on other subjects. Bailey wrote on to say ‘I think I was wrong. The more pictures I take of my family confirms this’. Over the last decade, I’ve also come to realise the hugely important value of family photographs as grandparents, aunts, uncles and my mother passed away. The significance and importance of those family photographs change as soon as the person dies.

Even more important are the old images. Vintage images are part of our social and family history that are valuable visual documentation that we tend to take for granted. The photographs are in that old box full of old photographs and always have been, that is until the years start to take there toll. Many images though can reach very old age and remain in as good condition as the day they were printed. I recently came across an image that was nearly a hundred years old but was still in great condition.

The 20×16 photograph was taken in 1925 and beautifully colour hand-tinted to create a pseudocolour image. In the years before colour photography became mainstream, it was a popular technique used on various types of images from portraits to landscape postcards.

Keeping the History

Often the task of copying a photograph includes removing the damage that can mount up over a long history. With the 20×16 image, the main photograph was in excellent condition. What had taken the brunt of the wear and tear was the mount that was still firmly in place. I was never going to be able to separate the photograph from the mount so decided that I could offer the client two choices – a cleaned up mount via Photoshop OR keep the wear and tear as part of the character of the whole image. Fortunately the client like the idea of keeping the copy as near to the original as possible.

Details regarding the photograph copying service can be found at https://www.richardflintphoto.com/photography-services/photograph-copying/