A Person Needs a Hobby: Sepia Saturday

Followers of the Donaghue and Stainer Crime Novel series will be interested to know that edits are about to begin in earnest on The Fregoli Delusion. I have to say, though, that getting this latest book done has been like walking from Ireland to Canada across the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, one step at a time.

My God, Newfoundland should be somewhere up ahead, shouldn't it?

But wait. A person needs a hobby, and now it's time to confess to one of mine. With thanks to Kat Mortensen and Alan Burnett, creators of Sepia Saturday ("Using old images as prompts for new reflections"), I'd like to sign on to their blog hop and invite everyone to check them out at http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.ca/.

I collect old photographs. I'm an amateur genealogist and have gathered a few family photos, but my collection is predominantly made up of strangers. Expressed in terms of the famous Ws, I don't know Who, Where, When or even, sometimes Why. Their photos have been removed from family albums and sold individually in many cases. Scattered to the four winds. So I'm gathering them up and bringing them together, these migrant faces, and wondering what stories they might tell me.

Without further ado, I give you my first offering on Sepia Saturday:

This tintype came to me in a job lot of twenty-six that I picked up for five dollars because they were all "hurtin' and in need of tender lovin' care." If you click on it for a closer look, you'll see that the image has chipped away quite a bit around the edges and the metal has rusted. (Quick tutorial for those more interested in crime fiction than antique photography: tintypes were made by placing a collodion emulsion on a piece of enameled or painted iron metal. They were, as Debra Clifford aptly puts it, the real workhorse of popular photography in the last half of the nineteenth century.)

When I look closely at the wear and rust on this tintype, however, I see that it actually enhances the beauty of the photo for me. It reminds me that although time does its work on us, something in the human spirit endures. These two young women, perhaps close friends, no doubt cherished the bond between them that lasted, hopefully, throughout their long lives. They're gone now, to wherever it is that we all go when time finishes with us, but this symbol of their friendship has tumbled down the years into my hands to appreciate as a true work of art. I'm glad to be able to share with you.

Or to put it another way, I'm glad to be able to reintroduce these two fine young ladies to the world, through a medium they couldn't possible have imagined in their wildest dreams.