This image comes from a small snapshot album covering the mid 1930s to the end of World War Two. It starts with carefree photos of young people at various seaside towns in England and moves on to wartime shots of military hospitals and navy ports. The final image is of the gravestone of Frank William Holloway of the Derby Yeomanry, who died in Tunisia aged 25 on the 26th March 1943.
The middle of the album includes several photographs taken in Ireland when a group of men were on leave from the British Army. It typifies the playfulness of the snapshot and I love the abstract shapes created by the unusual positioning of the four friends as they look down at the camera.
The intersection of text and images adds to the page though I’ll probably never know who the ‘me’ captioned in the photo was! The repeated use of the same photographs is something I have encountered in many amateur albums and one wonders whether they were added as filler or to make a particular point within the narrative.
Jacolette: 