Photographing the 1880's, Maidstone.

 

Before we left my beloved Maidstone I decided I would immortalise us that were left, the people closest to me, the only way I know how. Through the medium of  tintypes. By that I obviously mean dressing everyone up and posing them in the style of the 1880's. It had been a hard year. And my time with them was coming to an end. I can see by now that those are the times when I tend to do these on a larger scale, as a good bye and an attempt to capture a time almost gone by.

Covering the windows in brown paper and re arranging the furniture in our small one bedroom flat I managed to make something resembling a photo studio. The wash line hung heavy with drapes and curtains for weeks.. Some of the pictures were taken outside, sometimes in our garden where I stole my neighbours furniture for an afternoon of tea drinking. Others were taken down by my favourite river walk where you can get lost thinking you're in a Hardy novel all day. 

I spent some of my happiest days in this place.

In the end though, it is the people that make the place what it is. That and the sunlight shining through the leaves. And the thinglassed windows. I will never forget the place where my child made his first friends, where wine tea was a passtime and I touched history with my bare hands. 

True love grew in this place.

 So how did it turn out? Well..

After a day drying in the August sun, as the summer was fading away, I gave my hard copies away like I promised, packed my dresses and hats and photopapers into a box. The album still contains the memories from those days. The pressed flowers and clues to what's to come.

Thank you all. For all the good and the bad and the forever memorable days.