Thursday, July 07, 2005

Kenny Family Photo History


We were in Ballinasloe for the weekend, attending Cora’s surprise sixtieth meal. I came upon a long-mislaid facet of our family’s photo archive.

During the latest phase of the, now ongoing, de-clutterization of the parental attic, Claire discovered a box of old transparencies from the seventies. They were stored away with this battery-powered, magnifying, handheld viewer, which was still stored in its original, hippy aesthetic, packaging – groovey or what?

Some of the benefits of analogue kit like this viewer are its simplicity and resilience. Once we stripped out the ancient corroded batteries, cleaned up the inside and bended some pliable metal pressure-sensitive connections, we were good to go.

The transparencies were a mixed lot from the mid-seventies. They are particularly interesting as they fill a lacuna within the family photo albums where transparencies were popular for a brief period in the seventies.

I intend to clean them up and scan them, so that Cora has digital archive copies and I can get some new prints made for her. You never know, I may even post some of the less mortifying images on my Flickr page...

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