Pictures with secrets ........ and stories

 Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

And that is pretty much what we have here from a collection of images which belong to David Kennedy.

The originals were 4 by 5 glass negatives and date from sometime around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

Amongst these are a few which may even be family members including this one which is a favourite of mine which is one of two.

In the first the mother is staring down at her baby and in the second she smiles back at the camera while in both the photographer is caught in the mirror.

There are no clues as to where they were taken but in one there is a reference to Ostend and a few carry the names of hotels and restaurants, added to which there is a very distinctive church  all of which should help.

And I am always reminded of "Shooting the Past" which was a television drama, by Stephen Poliakoff first shown in 1999.  

The plot revolves around a huge photographic collection dating back to the 19th century, which has been acquired by an American corporation as part of the purchase of a Victorian mansion.  

The executives have no interest in the pictures, but two of the custodians set out to save the images by persuading the Americans of the importance of the pictures.  

This they do by researching the stories behind the some of the photographs.

What the two uncover gets to the heart of how photographs can tell stories about the lives of people, which can be incredibly revealing and fascinating.

Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

*Shooting the Past, Stephen Poliakoff, 1999, and staring,  Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan