Wednesday 14 October 2009

Street photos



Not photos of people in the street, but photos found in the street. The top one is a negative, and a bit scratched, and I just fiddled around with Paintshop to try and see what was going on in it.

I'd like to believe that the girl in the bottom photo is the woman in the top one; she has the same hairstyle and expression, and the photo looks about right for around 1959 or so. But I found the photos several months apart, in different streets, so it's unlikely they have any relation to each other.

Still, they look like family. The bottom one immediately reminded me of a story about my great-grandmother: when the town council wanted to widen the main street of the town, they went door-to-door informing residents that everyone would lose a fraction of their front gardens. My great-grandmother allegedly stood firm behind her front gate, and told the officials: "Nottedêm."
So the wider main street ended up with a narrower kink in it.

(For years I thought 'nottedêm' was an Afrikaans swear word. It took me ages to realise it was 'Not a damn'.)

4 comments:

Lada said...

This is so great! It reminded me of a wonderfull site - online museum of old family photographs: http://www.skarabej.com/english/index.php. I'm really enjoying your blog.

Ruby in the Dust said...

you're right, those people do look similar; how funny to pick them both up in the street! your great-grandmother must have been a formidable woman to successfully prevent a street widening :)

Billy said...

Yay to grandmothers and great-grandmothers!

dinkum design said...

What a lovely story. I can just picture your great-grandmother, she sounds like someone my great-grandmother would have been friends with.