Malcomson snapshot album, 1925 to 1932, Belfast

This album is one of my latest purchases. It contains about a hundred snapshots taken between 1925 and 1932 by H.J. Malcomson from Belfast. He started to put the album together when he was about eleven years of age, however, unlike a lot of photographers he has filled each page and captioned all the images. The snaps were taken with a Kodak Vest Pocket camera. I haven’t been able to find out too much about H.J. but he is probably related to the merchant and amateur natural historian Herbert Thomas Malcolmson who donated several collections to the Ulster Museum.

The album provides a good overview of a wealthy Protestant family’s life in the inter-war period. The subjects include the usual family events such as picnics and day trips and their home and its grounds at Glenorchy, Knock, Belfast. Many pages are of antiquarian interest and I especially love the first page above with its strange combination of a cromlech and a snapshot of hens in the hallway of the house.

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House of Mirth, Guest blogger

Stacy Waldman from House of Mirth Photos & Ephemera, kindly asked me to be a guest blogger on her excellent site. I decided to write about a fascinating Irish-American album relating to a family from Goresbridge, County Kilkenny, who emigrated to the United States in the early twentieth century. The album is full of great photographs and if you would like to see some of them and read more about it please follow this link to House of Mirth.

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Hi-jinks in Dublin!

This jumping man comes from an album I recently received from a military historian friend. It belonged to the well-to-do Foley family from North County Dublin and dates from between 1900 and 1920. It is full of great snapshots like this one which is part of a series taken at some sort of camp along the coast of Dublin. The ability to freeze action was called ‘instant photography’ and it became a staple of amateur practice in the early decades of the 20th Century. It reminds me of the iconic Lartigue photograph of his cousin ‘flying’.  This is featured in the BBC’s documentary series The Genius of Photography.

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