A wartime photograph

There is something about this photograph that draws you in.

This is John, Annie and Nora Garvey and we must be sometime near the end of the Great War.

Nora was born in 1915 so I think this must be 1917 or perhaps even 1918.

John by then will have been 30 and Annie 28.  They had been married at St Thomas’s in Pendleton and Annie had worked at one of the local cotton mills.

The photograph is one of those standard posed pictures that professional photographers went in for with studio props and often a backdrop.

But what makes this one all the more interesting are the poses and expressions on the faces of Annie and John.

He stares directly into the camera while she looks off to the left.

It may just be that Annie’s attention has been caught at the moment the picture was taken.  Perhaps the assistant dropped something.

Or this picture was one of a series and this was the one which was never meant to be released.

But photographs cost money and I doubt John and Annie wanted an also run in the collection.

So this picture was the one they chose and I can’t help feeling that while she looks a little distant he has an air of melancholy about him.

Of course we will never really know.  Nor at this stage can I say for certain when our picture was taken.

In time I hope we will know more about his military record, including where he served and which regiment that in turn might bring us closer to a date for the picture.

Pictures; Mr & Mrs Garvey and their daughter Nora, courtesy of Alan