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| The Brother, as he looked in 1976. Printed 2018, Adox MCC paper |
What's nice for me in this shot is not just my brother, but the bits&pieces which went to define the living room in my parents' house. The Binatone stereo just behind his head, for example - I can remember my dad being very excited by that purchase. He loved his music and was a tenor singer in the Church Quoir as well as singing in local festivals. The same stereo is now housed somewhere in my mother's garage - it's not that she's a hoarder, she just can't bear to throw things out :)
There's a ton of books and reading material scattered around. We did a lot of reading in our house in them days - there were no distractions like Internet or TV. Well, there was TV - only just, mind. I'll say more about that in a later post.
My mother still uses those same sofa and the same hardwood chairs that you can see to the right of the picture. And that's one of my dad's oil paintings on the wall. He was quite a decent artist and was planning to take up painting a bit more seriously in his retirement. Unfortunately that never happened - cancer took him just a year into retirement and it was clear it had been working on him for a few years. That's one of the reasons why, when early retirement became an option for me I jumped at it.
The edge markings indicate that this was shot was on Ilford FP4, by the way. The developer information wasn't written on the glassine negative file, unfortunately - probably Paterson Acutol or something like that. Printed on Adox MCC fibre paper, by the way - 42 years later. That still tickles me!
Looking forward to the screed on TV. In 1976 most US cities had a handful of TV stations, unlike the billion-channel universe we live in now. In 1972 my family blazed a trail by being among the first to get cable, which then was just an antenna on a tall hill with coax leading to homes. Dad loved the Chicago White Sox, and our cable subscription let us pull in Channel 44 from Chicago so he could see the games.
ReplyDeleteNice. Ireland was still in the dark ages in the 70s, Jim. It's hard to believe how far we've come in the last 40 years. Even so, where I live I'm lucky to get 2Mb/s on my Internet connection. A mile down the road in the seaside town of Portstewart and you'll get 30+Mb/s easily. That's rural life for you - but I'm not complaining...no noisy neighbours, except for the wildlife.
DeleteHow did photos get printed back in 1976? Did your family have a darkroom? Or was it done by a film lab? It must be a curious feeling to make those old photos come alive again.
ReplyDeleteIt is a bit surreal, seeing these old shots again Marcus, I have to admit. So familiar in many ways but so much time has passed they seem unreal, like I’m just uncovering a moment from a different life, albeit one I recognise intimately.
DeleteMy brother (a couple of years older than me) paved the way into this photography thing. Our dad was good with his hands and he turned a small spare bedroom into a darkroom for us. It all came good once I got my Saturday job and could buy film, chemistry&paper at cost price. I still have boxes full of prints from that era - mostly still in good shape, remarkably.