Sepia

In the pre-internet era, in the days of non-digital photography, most families owned and treasured their albums of pictures. Often arranged chronologically by year, each series of collections defined lives. Unlike today’s ubiquitous smart phone compilations hung out to dry on line, these assemblages were defined by the tinge, brightness (garishness, for example, personifying the 1970s’ polaroid) and clarity.

Over time, albums built up a folklore of their own, the sepia tinge of the older ones a metaphor for ‘good times’. Whether they really were or not, becomes impossible to objectively define as this is a trick played by time itself to which no one becomes inured

The same is as true of eras as individuals: the ‘swinging’ 60 s (I’m too young to have an opinion); the ‘grim’ 1970s (I feel privileged to remember them); the solipsistic 1980s; the weary, fin de siècle 1990s. None of these are really true or really untrue – there is no way of objectively testing what is ultimately a personal recollection and no way of quantifying the way in which the collective memory has been influenced by the way the stories were …