I love photographs, I have loved pouring over pictures of my childhood, trying to remember when they were taken and what the world felt like then, looking at pictures of long dead relatives to see if I could spot any resemblance, looking through a book that Dad bought which has photos of the Paris Exhibition and of Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. I began to love photographs even more when I watched the Steven Poliakoff film ‘Shooting the Past’ in 1999. Shooting the Past delves into a world quite separate from modern life, and demonstrates that the preservation of the past, in order to tell the extraordinary stories of the lives of ordinary people, can be astonishingly powerful and revealing. Each time I re-watch it I see something else.

Perhaps that’s why I take so many photos wherever I go. I want to use them to tell stories one day and I want my relatives to be able to look through them and wonder about where they came from.

Today I was looking through this post from Twisted Sifter and some of the pictures nearly made me cry. They are amazing and I wish I had the skill or opportunity to take them.

Maybe I’ll have an opportunity to add to them one day.