Went to a antique fair at the weekend and came across a lady (Mary) who was selling lots of things including old photographs and negatives. I asked her how she came to have the old photograph albums in which the photographs were being sold off individually and then why she was selling them and she told me that she was the last person alive in her family and she had no relatives to pass them onto and she didn't want them to be just thrown out so decided to sell them.
Me being me, this sat with me as I flicked through the albums and looked at the people and stories being told through the photographs. It hit a particular nerve too because of some other things I have photographed earlier this year along a similar line which I have not yet put up on my blog as these photographs seem to be turning out into more "projects" and in order to communicate them, I need to think about what I will write up about them and in a way these photographs too have an effect on the other stuff too which makes my communication all the more challenging! Anyway, I was so intrigued by these photographs as there was something that really drew me into them and the people I decided to buy a pile of them and particularly the negatives because I have just gotten a scanner for film negatives (yay). As Mary saw my interest in them (which in part she was surprised at and I explained how I loved photographs and with these ones they were really interesting (wait till I share the others in another post at some time) and I hoped that they might spark off some creative story telling) she started to tell me about the people who were in them, her relatives which shocked me! It turned out that the photographs were of her relatives, some of whom it transpired worked for some of their lives at Bangour Hospital.....
.....a hospital complex which was built in the Victorian times to look after people who were insane, infirm or both......
.... which is a place I photographed earlier this year and is what has resulted in me going to Review Santa Fe at the end of the month, spooky or what!
Not only was the building which once was Bangour Hospital falling apart, disused and unwanted and a complex which I felt it had taken on the personality of the patients that once lived there and had provided shelter over and had found a connection to me because my late brother lived his life in a place like that. In finding these photographs, it felt like this relationship was going even deeper by finding out that some of the people that worked there too ended up with sad lives. This lady's aunt Barbara you see had for many years been having an affair with a man called Robert whose wife was physically and mentally ill.
When eventually the wife died, she married Robert but not long after their marriage, Robert became terminally ill and died soon after they were married. Strangely, Barbara then married Robert's brother William and there were no children to the marriage.
They all had connections (through work or otherwise) because of Bangour for a time, he as a porter, and she as a nurse. The lady I spoke to, Mary, who was selling them, said she was the only child left alive, and she had no children or cousins to pass any of this onto, hence why they were being sold....
Mary's Granny's funeral.
Bangour, the people who lived and worked there seem to be calling, is that another thing that photography does.....
Bangour, the people who lived and worked there seem to be calling, is that another thing that photography does.....
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