Photographic MEMORIES
A glance at the faces in these portraits makes it seem like their lives were a world away from our own but look again and you’ll discover people quite like us. The snaps are from a newly digitised archive of a family business – and you could help fill in
HER face looks tired and worn, the eyes gentle but sad as she stares out at the camera. Perhaps the cause is the man in uniform next to her – there was a flurry of family photographs taken early in World War I as men prepared to leave their loved ones. The snap, dating from about 1915, is one of many pictures from the Johnston Collection, an archive of 40,000 photographs which volunteers have just finished digitising. Dating as far back as the 1870s, the pictures give an insight into how the lives of children changed in the early part of the last century. The photograph features in tomorrow’s episode of the BBC’s Growing up in Scotland: A Century of Childhood, which looks at childhood over the last 100 years. Earlier, 19th century photographs show stiff shots with children in formal clothes but as the dates move forward, the changing attitudes towards young people unfolds.
As Professor Emeritus Hugh Cunningham, of Kent University, said in the programme: “It’s a complete reversal of what went before in that the best years would be your childhood years and life is in a sense downhill after childhood.”
Childhood also became something special as a photo of a little girl with two dogs reveals.
Prof Cunningham said: “Then a photograph would be very rare so you’d want to make something special of it. Why is she being photographed with these dogs? They are telling us that she is having a good childhood.”
The photograph of the soldier’s family may point to an unhappy aspect of childhood in the early 20th century – the high infant mortality rates.
Experts in the programme reveal that back then, two out of every five children in Dundee failed to make their first birthday and Scotland’s cities had some of the worst childhood mortality rates in Britain.
Fergus Mather, leader of the Johnston Collection Digitisation Project, is hoping the public will fill in some of the blanks now that all 40,000 images are on the website and available to view.
He said: “We do look forward to getting information we can add to the site.”
The archive is the legacy of the Johnston family photographic business, which captured life in and around Wick, Caithness, between 1863 and 1975. The negatives were passed to the Wick Society, where they were catalogued and stored.
Work began on digitising them in 2008, and, with help from the North Highland College in Thurso and a grant from funding body Jisc, 10,000 images were put on a website.
The Wick Society’s volunteers then digitised the rest of the 30,000-plus images, finishing a few weeks ago.
The archive shows fishing, harbour and farming scenes as well as formal portraits of people whose descendents still live in Wick.
Fergus said: “I was recognising faces from the photographs when I was out and about even though it’s two generations later.” ●Growing up in Scotland: A Century of Childhood will be shown on BBC2 tomorrow at 9pm. Visit the Johnston Collection at www. johnstoncollection.net