I love to find old photos of people I don’t know. Pictures tell stories, and y’all know I love stories.
I’m preparing a presentation for my quilt guild on techniques used in textile collage. One of my methods is to print photos on fabric, stitch a collage, then write a story to accompany it.
In getting ready for this part of my class, I went through my collection of photos picked up at garage sales and antique stores, and my imagination took off!
In my fabric collages, if I use photos of people I know, I feel obliged to stick to the truth. I’m careful not to use an image without permission, and I strive to get the facts. Those efforts take time. If the photo tells a great story, or conveys a special memory, it’s worth it.
But, I do love to use a photo of unknown persons and tell my imaginative story. In those cases, the story evolves as I stitch this person, and it’s pure fun-writing fiction is a blast!
The photos I’m sharing here instantly brought adventures to mind…I can’t wait to print them and play with them. One in particular is mind-boggling.
It’s this family of four – printed as an 8” x 10” and mounted on a backer-board. I saw it in an antique store over several visits, and finally couldn’t resist it. The reason I was so intrigued is that the woman looks to be strange. I know what I thought…but only verbalized it to Jim…he knows I have some off the wall ideas and wouldn’t think I had “lost it”.
Some sewing friends came to visit, saw this in my sewing room, and one gal exclaimed, “That woman is DEAD!.” “That’s what I thought,” I replied. My friend went on to educate me about the Victorian era custom of taking a family photo ‘one last time’ after someone had died. I then began to read about it and learned, that, indeed, it was a relatively common practice.
So, what do you think? I think this might be the case … and my imagination goes so many places… about the physical limitations the corpse would present to the photographer. And, the expression on the face of the little girl on the right tells me she may be traumatized for a long, long time.
Note: Some of the old photos I’ve shared here are not always of the highest resolution – but the quality is good enough to print on fabric, then paint and embellish – and that’s my process.
And the bride at the top? Don’t you think she has a story to tell? I’ve actually written the story…waiting to share it with you once I had it printed on cloth…gotta get busy.