Time, place and change.

A chance find, a coincidence and a follow up.

Alongside my eclectic collection of cameras which have built up over the last 45 years, I have been acquiring negatives and prints wherever I find them. Much of the collection sits in boxes that have not been opened for thirty years or so, but not long ago (actually eleven years, now I think about it!) I rediscovered a box of them whilst looking for something else. I lifted a few out and held them up to the window to see what was on them and of the first two half plate negatives I looked at, one looked rather familiar.

After contact printing it I realised that it was of a farmhouse which I had photographed in the late eighties, when it was very dilapidated. I found that negative from the 80’s and did a print off it, noticing that I had stood almost in the same position as the first shot, taken 65 years previously without knowing it.

I remembered that the house was renovated a few years after I had photographed it, so I revisited it to get another shot from the same viewpoint.

I think the three images make an interesting set and these fascinating pictures prompt all sorts of questions about time, decay, memory, and how we use spaces and places. I haven’t been back to the house to show the owners, but I expect they would like to see them.

The first negative was shot in 1923, just over a hundred years ago, the second one was in 1988 and the final one was in 2014.

There are no more old, undeveloped properties in my area that I am aware of, I think all of them have been renovated now, often with modern interiors that show no evidence of the history. I did pictures inside this property in 1988 and there was a cast iron range where all of the family cooking would have been done. I don’t suppose it is there any more, even as a talking point. I helped a couple that I know move house last week and they moved to a Georgian house in North Yorkshire that still had a working range in the kitchen, it was lovely to see.

I know that dilapidated properties are an irrisistable subject for many photographers, but to have pictures from three different periods in history is pretty rare and I am very pleased to have them. I have many other negatives of old properties in my area, and for some of those I photographed the occupants before they died or were evicted. This is going to be my follow up article next week.

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Andrew Sanderson April 2025.