The Best Shop in Bridport, and the treasures i found there!

Whilst on holiday last month in Charmouth, me&Bruce jumped on a bus and headed into the market town of Bridport, only a few miles away from Lyme Regis. We had no idea what to expect, but when the bus passed this shop upon arrival, we ran back to take a closer look!

The little boxes outside had a variety of old magazine pages, postcards and music sheets, which was a promising start! Once inside, we found a treasure trove of all our favourite type of goodies! Old photographs, cameras, postcards, film, glass plate negatives, super 8 film, old filmstar posters, kodak memorabilia, etc etc...IT WAS AMAZING!

Image found via Google

As you can imagine, we spent quite a long time rummaging through every box! Bruce found several amazing postcards and a new cable release, so he was pleased!

 

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I was picking up everything i fancied really! But my BEST find was this amazing album, which i discovered lying at the very bottom of a pile of family photo albums. What made it so special for me, was the rather recognisable gentleman that kept appearing throughout this collection, with his wonderful round glasses and crooked smile...how could i refuse?

I payed a very reasonable £5 for this treasure, i KNOW it would go for far more on Ebay, but Doug was too fair in his prices - if his shop was in some trendy London backstreet, he could get away charging triple, but you could tell that he just wants others to enjoy these little curiosities that he has such a passion for!

Back to the album, it seems to have a running theme of locations, including Swanage, Bagpath in Gloucestershire, and the reference to Sunnyside, which i believe is in Rotherham?


So, why do I think it deserves to be shown? Well for a start, the photographs are simply amazing, all the best kinds of nostalgia - children building dens, favourite pets, school pictures....but the actual pairing of the images, and how the owner created the album is also it's appeal. 
They are not in date order, but rather paired by themes or even, favourite images first! When looking through these pages, keep an eye out for our distinctive gentleman ageing, then becoming a boy again, and several examples of charming before > after family portraits. One ripped photograph leads the imagination wild...and the portraits of him and his wife suddenly aged, is very emotionally charged, and unexpectedly appears in the middle of the album. This was obviously a later project to be completed, sadly, it only reaches the middle of the book, the loose photographs i found at the back are in the last image.

I hope you enjoy looking at these photographs as much as i do!

 

I really do have a passion for albums such as these, I'm aware that found imagery is a well exhausted medium, but i just can't help myself! I would rather let my investigator side search for references to shed light on these collections, than spend my time staring at continuous empty, monotonous contemporary photo-rubbish... oh yes indeed!

Thanks for reading!

Katie