PHOTOGRAPHY AND I

INSPIRATION FROM THE CHRISTINA BEVAN AUTOCHROME COLLECTION

These captivating images, captured in 1913, have nothing to do with wedding photography, but this article does tell you a little about me, my relationship with photography, and what inspires me.

When I first saw these original colour autochrome images from 1913 they stopped me in my tracks; I was at once fascinated by their age, contents, and character. I’ve poured over every image contained within the collection since, eager to explore every colour, texture, and detail preserved from 109 years ago.

To me, there are few more poignant examples of the power of photography than these. Something stirs within these images that feels melancholic, innocent, and real. It fascinates me that none of those emotions have been blunted or altered by the passage of time.

PHOTOGRAPHY, US, AND TIME

There’s no profound statement, pretence, or gesture contained within these images; just honesty and simplicity, Maybe that’s the point, or maybe it was intentional - but it doesn't matter, because the viewer can travel back in time and glimpse the flowers, skies, and youth of summer 1913 – just as the subject, 16-year-old Christina Bevan, once did in real life. The images, taken by Mervyn O'Gorman, cause us to contrast the fleeting nature of all that beauty against the permanence of the timeless, rugged beach with its ancient relics of stone and rock; of cliff and sea. And inevitably we are led to reflect on our own mortality.

What moves me is that these images not only expose the fragile nature of mortal beauty, but the fragility of time itself. Time, our time, is, like us, fragile, precious, and fleeting. Time is difficult to comprehend without the kind of perspective offered by these images. These photographs undo the 109 years between us and their creation as though they simply aren’t there; as though they are nothing.

These fragments of somebody’s moments are all that’s left of that day on the beach in 1913 – for no living memory or other testimony exists. Christina Bevan died 68 years later in 1982, aged 84. But how precious those skies, those flowers, and that youth are; and how privileged we are to be able to steal ourselves away, to be there caressing the pebbles on the beach that day as she was; to enjoy those moments as if we were with her.

Images © Royal Photographic Society Collection