"Look at the Birdie, please!" (or not...) - Sepia Saturday 750

 

To celebrate Sepia Saturday #750, Alan chose the collage above, with the prompt:

"Our theme this month on Sepia Saturday is "New Arrivals" and right in the middle of the month we have the 750th week of the internet meme that celebrates the very opposite of all things new and allows us to share our love of old photos. It is, however, possible to combine the two, to link new and old. Most collectors of old photographs know the thrill of the arrival of a new batch of old photographs. You can celebrate that, this week, or new discoveries, or new interpretations or - being Sepia Saturday which has battled against rules for 750 weeks now - anything you want as long as it is somehow linked to old photographs. ---"

Well, I have no "new" photos, but do I still have a box full of old ones that never made it to the family albums... Most of them were at some point sorted into different categories by my dad, and put in envelopes; but for some reason, I have to confess that so far I never really felt "thrilled" by the thought of sorting through them again myself. Most of them seem to just be copies of others that I've already seen elsewhere - or similar, but not very good... 

But perhaps it's time to take closer look at some? Today I decided to check out an envelope marked "Before 1930", where I found (among others) these four group photos below - from Christmas celebrations at the end of the 1920s.

(Unedited photos straight from the scanner)

A touch of digital editing helps a little - but not really enough... ;-)

This I'm pretty sure is from Storegården, i.e. the farm where my grandmother Sally, born 1900, grew up and lived until she got married to my grandfather Gustaf T in 1930. The elderly woman in the middle is her mother Selma. To the left of her, her oldest daughter, Hildur (from her first marriage), and her son Nils (two years younger than my grandmother). To the right of Selma, my grandfather Gustaf. If this is 1929, he was by then engaged to my grandmother - but he had been a friend of the family long before that. I don't recognise the man on the far right. Behind them, standing, are my grandmother's older half-brother Gustav (the "postcard collector", for readers remembering the postcard correspondence between him and his sister Gerda that inspired this blog in the first place) - and Sally. I suspect that one reason this photo never made it to the albums is that at least three of them look half asleep here!

Same room, but probably a different year (different curtains!). Gustav, Olle (Hildur's fiancé), Sally, Gustaf T, Hildur and Selma. Aside from everyone looking in different directions, I don't think Hildur would have appreciated that photo of herself!

Same room again. Selma, Olle, Hildur and Sally sitting; Nils, unknown woman (perhaps Nils' fiancée Carin? but I can't say I really recognise her in this photo) and Gustaf E. (Something spooky going on with theChristmas tree here...)

Different room, and the only people I recognise are Hildur to the left, Sally with an unknown girl on her lap, and my grandfather Gustaf on the right. No idea who the others are. Again, a photo where they're all looking in different directions!