It is a familiar enough scene.
We are looking across at the Library and War Memorial in Didsbury in the summer of 1959.
And a decade later when I began to explore this part of south Manchester I can’t say it looked that different.
Nor for that matter does it today. The tree behind the War Memorial has matured and another stands in front of it which wasn’t there in 1959 and there is now a telephone kiosk on our left.
That said there is something very dated about our picture which has less to do with it being monochrome and more to do with the people and that scooter.
Picture postcards from a century ago show us a landscape which looks old and different, but here it’s almost now but not quite.
And that brings me to the new project and collaboration with my old pal Peter Topping. For over two years we have been working together with Peter painting pictures and me telling the stories behind them.
It took us from our first exhibition at the Big Green Festival in 2011 to the history trails in local venues and most recently the History Wall down at Albany Road which told the story of Chorlton across an 80 metre display, allowing people to walk the history of the township.The display will soon be relocated at Chorlton High School.
And now Amberley Press have invited us to produce a book on Didsbury recent past.
The format is the well tried and tested one of 180 images divided between the past and the same scene today.
But to spice up the format Peter will be doing the initial research, taking the new photos, and converting some of the scenes into paintings while I am working on the people and stories that bring the old and new images together.
We are grateful to all those who have already contributed picture postcards from their collection, but would welcome more.
From the very beginning we decided that the picture post card was one of the most powerfu ways we could record that old Didsbury.
But we also decided that we would not restrict ourselves to those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Didsbury's more recent past is just as important and with this in mind we hope to includ others from the middle decades of the last century.
So our 1959 Tuck postcard has its own story to tell and is as much a part of Didsbury’s history as plenty from an earlier period.
But I will leave you with a preview of one of Peter's painting which will be included in the book.
I rather think it makes for a nice contrast with the photograph from 1959.
Picture; War Memorial and Library from the series, Didsbury, Lilywhite, issued by Tuck & Sons, 1959, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history and Painting of Didsbury Library © 2012 Peter Topping
web www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk facebook Paintings from Pictures
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| The War Memorial and Llibrary in 1959 |
And a decade later when I began to explore this part of south Manchester I can’t say it looked that different.
Nor for that matter does it today. The tree behind the War Memorial has matured and another stands in front of it which wasn’t there in 1959 and there is now a telephone kiosk on our left.
That said there is something very dated about our picture which has less to do with it being monochrome and more to do with the people and that scooter.
 |
| The Library |
And that brings me to the new project and collaboration with my old pal Peter Topping. For over two years we have been working together with Peter painting pictures and me telling the stories behind them.
It took us from our first exhibition at the Big Green Festival in 2011 to the history trails in local venues and most recently the History Wall down at Albany Road which told the story of Chorlton across an 80 metre display, allowing people to walk the history of the township.The display will soon be relocated at Chorlton High School.
And now Amberley Press have invited us to produce a book on Didsbury recent past.
 |
| Sitting in the sun by the memorial |
But to spice up the format Peter will be doing the initial research, taking the new photos, and converting some of the scenes into paintings while I am working on the people and stories that bring the old and new images together.
We are grateful to all those who have already contributed picture postcards from their collection, but would welcome more.
From the very beginning we decided that the picture post card was one of the most powerfu ways we could record that old Didsbury.
But we also decided that we would not restrict ourselves to those of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Didsbury's more recent past is just as important and with this in mind we hope to includ others from the middle decades of the last century.
 |
| The Library today, © 2012 Peter Topping |
But I will leave you with a preview of one of Peter's painting which will be included in the book.
I rather think it makes for a nice contrast with the photograph from 1959.
Picture; War Memorial and Library from the series, Didsbury, Lilywhite, issued by Tuck & Sons, 1959, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history and Painting of Didsbury Library © 2012 Peter Topping
web www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk facebook Paintings from Pictures
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