Saving the Shipp Family photo archive

Created by Graham 7 years ago
As told to Brian and me by Colin. I tell this because I think it will have resonance with many people. Our Dad had always been a photographer throughout his life, but he was pretty lax at cataloguing or putting his photos into albums. Colin was visiting our Mum after our Dad's death. My Mum gave Colin a bag to throw in the rubbish bin. He looked inside and found some of our Dad's photos. 'You can't throw these away' he said, but Mum replied that she had already got rid of most of them and she didn't want them cluttering up the place, they weren't any use to anyone. Luckily she hadn't found Dad's huge cache of negatives at the bottom of his wardrobe. Colin took all of them away and over some time worked with a professional printer to reprint every photograph. It cost him a fortune, but he wouldn't let us share the cost. Each was printed one, two or three times and assembled into relevant piles for Brian, me and himself. Each print was meticulously dated and labelled on the back, he did his research. He sent prints to our uncles where they interesting for them. Each batch I received was accompanied by a long letter, hand written in proper ink. It was a wonderful thing to do and Brian and I have to thank him for saving that photographic archive ofmemories of our growing up together, which would have been lost.That was a very Colin thing to do. Thank you so much brother! The On Guard photo at the Tower of London from 1955 is one of those photos.