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Alan Burnett

@abfixby.bsky.social
577 followers 560 following 1.3K posts

One time teacher, one time writer on European social policy, now retired, walking the dog and doing a little harmless blogging. In love with the interface between words and images. www.alanburnett.com

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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 4h
This week’s postcard comes from the collection of my great-uncle, Fowler Beanland. It shows the Mechanics’ Institute in Keighley, a building with which he would have been very familiar. It was built in 1853, a few years before he was born, and burnt down in 1962, a couple of years after he died.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Artificial intelligence can manipulate images in wonderful ways, transforming corporate headquarters into Dalí-esque fantasies and Victorian piles into Gaudí-esque dreams. However, you don’t need AI when a plate-glass office block can provide its own reflections on Bradford.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is another of my “little flakes of history”: a negative from the 1920s depicting an unknown trio who have clearly found something of great significance in the bushes. “Look at this,” they seem to be saying from a century ago. “Look at what?” we reply. So far, no answer has emerged.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
At the start of a new month, I once again dive into my file of photographs taken over the last sixty or more years. Photographs make time stand still, and I see these pictures as little flakes of history. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Now I go cleaning windows to earn an honest bob / For a nosy parker it's an interestin' job / Now it's a job that just suits me / A window cleaner you would be / If you can see what I can see / When I'm cleanin' windows.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I took this photograph of the Royal Albert Docks in Liverpool yesterday while my wife was browsing a local gift shop. I sent it to my friend Jane, who suggested I use it for today’s calendar. The sky really was this blue, and the reflections really were this vibrant. It’s a grand place, Liverpool.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Another way to cross the River Mersey is the method I’ll be using later today: travelling through the Mersey Tunnel. The Queensway Tunnel - the one I’ll be using - was constructed in 1934, the year before this fine old picture postcard was sent. .....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Later this weekend, I will be crossing the River Mersey. To celebrate, here is a photograph taken during a trip across the river more than seventy years ago. Later this year, I hope to make a slightly longer water crossing to be reunited with my brother. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. .....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The third element of my Dewsbury triptych is the rather beautiful Dewsbury Town Hall, built in 1886 by local architects Henry Hottom and George A. Fox. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The second of my Dewsbury triptych celebrates that moment - which all photographers know well - when you suddenly catch sight of an alignment of objects or an idiosyncratic collection of shapes, and snap away with enthusiastic abandon. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
When brothers Robert and William Machell built their new mill in Dewsbury in 1874, they chose to incorporate four finely carved stone portraits into the fabric of the handsome Cloth Hall Mill. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Is there anything better than an old picture postcard - with a dramatic scene of waves breaking over the Blackpool seashore on one side and a cryptic message on the other The card appears to have been sent by my grandfather, Albert Beanland, to his brother, Fowler Beanland. ...
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
At the outbreak of World War II, my father (on the left in the photograph), who was in a reserved occupation, joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). He always claimed that LDV stood for “look, duck and vanish”. ...
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I've only ever worked in a mill as a holiday job while at university - really, I was just playing at it. But I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson of mill workers. Threads of yarn bind my genes together, and bobbins form the bones of my ancestry. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I'm not quite sure how I acquired this photograph. I don't appear in it, and it isn't my school. None of that matters, however: the scene rings more bells than a school clock. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
There is a pleasure in collecting old photographs of unknown people. They are people who long ago departed this world, leaving behind only a few fading family memories and the occasional faded photograph. We get to shine a light on these forgotten faces and imagine what might have been.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
“Sorry I could not see you this morning” was the brief message from FW to Mr S. Mellor of Leeds in July 1903. The choice of picture postcard is an interesting one: not only does it depict a fine Victorian building, but it also happens to be my old school. ...
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I have no idea who this group of women is or why so many of them are dressed in a similar style. You can speculate to your heart’s content and still probably come nowhere near a convincing answer. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Just one of the many decorative plaques found outside the truly magnificent Black Friar pub on Queen Victoria Street in London. The decorations inside are even more spectacular, making the pub an essential stop for any visitor to London. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I saw this lady at the Ferens Gallery in Hull. I asked her permission to take the photograph and she voiced no objections. She is Georgie, the wife of the artist Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928). She is rather beautiful.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Skegness, 1982: Out there somewhere lies the sea. Somewhere behind us is the land. Between the two stretches an endless series of sand-filled boundaries - land and sea, sea and sky - inhabited by that hardiest of annuals: the seaside holidaymaker.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
This is another example of my somewhat imaginative use of captions to mask the fact that, after the best part of fifty years, I can’t remember exactly where I was when I took this photograph. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I think I may have used this photograph of mine before for my daily calendar, but never mind - it is well worth a second outing. It shows Halifax Borough Market more than half a century ago. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Was Connie staying at the Midland Hotel in Bradford? What examination was she due to take on the 3rd of April? Did she pass? Questions, questions, questions. These days, it would be a WhatsApp message, with the answer on the next line. .....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
The problem with modern AI-driven photo-restoration apps is their need for perfection. Faces become as fresh as regenerated daisies, and clothing appears dry-cleaner pressed. Old photos need blotches, smudges, and indistinct patches. .....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
In these parts, we erect tall monuments to civic pride, elaborate steeples as testaments to divine redemption, and monolithic chimneys in praise of the God of Industry. Egypt may have the pyramids and Athens the Acropolis, but Halifax has the Corona Chimney at Dean Clough.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
As I continue to work my way through hundreds of old negatives - the legacy of a lifetime of photography - I valiantly try to categorise and organise the shots by attaching precise descriptions and accurate keywords. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I am of the opinion that you should never let a month go by without including at least one photograph of Burdock Way in Halifax. This majestic concrete structure, soaring over the Hebble Valley, provides an urban backdrop of endless dramatic lines and sultry curves. It is road as art.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
It’s the 1st of September, and all the shops will be getting ready for Christmas. Before we condemn this as another twenty-first-century excursion into the realms of cheap commercialism, take a look at this advertisement from the Halifax Evening Courier from exactly 100 years ago. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Realising that I hadn't chosen an image for today’s calendar by 10 p.m. last night, I turned to a committee of friends I was sharing a drink or three with and asked them to choose a photo from my archives. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Where do seaside fairground rides go during the winter? They sit in storage facilities, waiting for the sun to shine, waiting for the music to start again.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Albert was the only member of the family to leave Bradford behind - the factories, the mills, and the smell of lanolin. Rose Ellen was wedded to the future but drawn to the past: Victorian in a post-Victorian world. Ivy would see so much, yet miss out on even more. Pictures from the family’s past.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I've always believed in looking up as we walk through a town or city to admire the architectural wonders that so often surround us. Equally, however, it is worth looking down - especially if, like me, you are a fan of drain covers. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
A seaside holiday: flat caps, thick overcoats, and a bench overlooking the sun-stroked sands. Watching the worm diggers and perhaps sharing a potted-meat sandwich. The sun casts shadows across the stone jetty, while the sea leaves ripples in the sand.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I've always worked on the principle that, if you're walking past a pub, you should take a picture of it and then pop in for a pint - in case it isn't there the next time you pass. I clearly adhered to this principle in the early 1980s when I passed the Earl of Arundel pub in Sheffield. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
When this photograph was taken, Issy and I had already been together for three years. Three years later, we were married. That was 53 years ago today. That's an awful lot of days. And I wouldn’t change a single one of them.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
You could walk to the top of Shaw Lane in Halifax today and take a photograph similar to this one. I took mine almost half a century ago, but the mills are still standing and the cobbles are still set in the road. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
We lost a dear friend of over fifty years last week. Peter Howell was a noted classicist, a distinguished architectural historian, and a former chair of the Victorian Society. Perhaps most of all, he was a wise, witty, and loyal friend. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Home - 'nuff said.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Whenever I visit Edinburgh, I try to make time to visit the Queen Street rooms of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. I've been a member for more than thirty years, and tonight I'll have the pleasure of taking my son and daughter-in-law there for a meal….
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I've gone to Edinburgh for a few days. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to take some photographs. Here's one I took earlier.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I know this photo was taken before my time - though, I have to admit, not that much before my time - but I can still identify with the shopfronts on Crown Street, Halifax. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Someone told me the other evening that I was responsible for them looking up whenever they walked around Halifax. As long as one keeps half an eye out for dangerous lampposts, this is a habit to be encouraged. .....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
This is one of my photographs from my time helping out at Marsden Jazz Festival twenty years ago. Sometimes an image is enough - you don't need words. Add music to taste.
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Back in the 1980s, as I was slowly losing what little natural hearing I had left, I would often go to Cleethorpes. I was drawn, in particular, to the latticework of timber and iron struts beneath the pier. I have dozens of such photographs in my archives. ....
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Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
There are few finer moments than when you’re sitting in a pub, enjoying a pint, and some kind person comes up to you, hands you a book, and says, “We were having a clear-out and came across this old book about Halifax, and immediately thought of you.”
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