A Village Lost and Found

Blackwells Bookshop, Oxford, 28 October 2009

Okay, so we move on to stereo photography. (I don't think I've even finished everything I wanted to write about 'Bang!' yet). What did I know about it? Virtually nothing - every now and then, these kind of 'double photos' appearing on Brian's site which I'm supposed to have crossed my eyes to witness in 3D. Also, the fact that Brian had been talking about writing this book as long as I can remember 'hanging around' his website, ie 2003!

So here we were at last. This time, I took my daughter along as well due to her interest in and study of art. We spent the day in Oxford, and, after checking out the bookshop, we paid a visit to the History of Science Museum opposite, which, coincidentally, contained some Victorian stereoscopic equipment amongst other things.

I thought that this talk on stereo photography, as well as the book, would be something different - but just how different, I had no idea! During the talk, we were taken through the story of the book as well as some things about the life of T R Williams. He apparently wanted to preserve these pictures of the Oxfordshire village of Hinton Waldrist because of his childhood memories of the place. Wearing 3D glasses, the first real 'WOW' effect was produced by an original black and white print where there was a greater 3D clarity. Apart from many of the pictures found in the book, Brian showed us some of Williams's other work - a 16th birthday portrait of a daughter of Queen Victoria and pictures of Crystal Palace amongst other things. You could quickly glean one reason for Brian's admiration of him - he was truly a perfectionist!

But the wonderful thing about it all was the relaxed (although professional) ambiance of the whole thing - here was Brian with a passion - well, nothing new there I suppose - but not the passion that made his career, or the one to which he devoted much study, this time it was a pure hobby that had originated from a childhood encounter with crude 3D pictures found in a Weetabix packet.

Elena Vidal, Brian's co-author, went through slides found in the book in more detail while he read the verses TR Williams had written to accompany the pictures. A stunning fact was that the scenes TR Williams captured were of ordinary village people living their everyday lives, his subjects unwittingly immortalised by the pictures and truly brought to life by the stereo technique. Afterwards, there was time for questions - and you could really get a flavour of the amount of painstaking research undertaken for this absolute gem of a book. Notably the use of colour tinting was discussed, which prompted Brian to talk about his use of paintbox on the computer, and another query was about the number of photos in the series - 59 - how did they know that? Apparently, from a Dickens novel! At the book signing afterwards I had the opportunity to ask Brian and Elena which novel it was, and was told, 'Little Dorrit'.

After everyone attending had had their books signed, I decided to go for something that I'd had at the back of my mind for some time - to get a picture with Brian - and on this occasion, with Elena too, of course! The result is below! if you'd asked me beforehand, would have been just the picture I wanted, thanks to the initiative of Phil Webb, Brian's driver, who offered to take the picture with Georgia in it when she was going to take just me in between our two illustrious authors!

All this has made me think about the 'historical stereo' inherent in pictures - whether they're 'stereo' in the technical sense or not - like TR Williams's pictures being viewed by us as part of a history on the one hand, and the personal history that led him to take the pictures on the other. In the same way, this picture enters the collection of pictures of our family history, yet at the same time there's that other side to the history - what drew us to come to be there for this picture to be taken! At first, Phil took one but Brian was turning round to me to say he wasn't ready - clearly insisting on a pose! Anyway, TOTALLY LOVE THE END RESULT and will be eternally grateful for that generous moment!

L to R: Elena Vidal, Georgia, me and Dr B!

The Hay Festival, 3 June 2010

Brian and Elena at the book-signing

It was with great anticipation that I put my big toe over the Welsh border on Thursday, 3 June to attend another talk by Brian and Elena on 'A Village Lost and Found'.

On the whole, it was a repeat of the previous presentation at Oxford (see above) but there was a display of picture s at the end which I don't recall seeing before.

Anyway, the interactivity of the Question and Answer session afterwards once again generated some interesting points - for example, that the pictures represented a sanitised view of life as it was for the inhabitants of Hinton Waldrist - as Elena explained, they were, in fact, bound to the Lord of the Manor and had little freedom within a life of drudgery.

Throughout the event, there was a background of fairly loud music with an Asian flavour coming from another area of the festival. Although it was not at all unpleasant, it led Brian to threaten to bring his guitar next time to show them how loud he could play - an announcement which gave rise to warm and enduring applause!

Having announced at Oxford that he and Elena intended to work on a biography of T R Williams, he appears to be less intent on that now, having been distracted by the possibility of composing a study of the demonic French 3D images known as 'the diableries': DEVILS WITH RED EYES!