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Mar 11, 2021Liked by Adam Smyth

Such pictures often used to be taken with a specialist "banquet camera", a large format (sheet film) camera, usually with a wide, narrow aspect ratio similar to a "panoramic" view. The specially equipped ladder you identify suggests this was a firm specialising in this line of work (rather like the firms that used to do high-quality school photos with a rotating lens camera) but -- assuming your scan does the image justice -- this looks like a rather ordinary view camera image (say, 5" x 4"). However, the oddly trapezoid shape of your image makes it hard to determine the original aspect ratio (which may well have been cropped anyway).

Talking of "the unanswerable questions, the individual stories that can never be known", I wonder if you are aware of the extraordinary project carried out by Andrew Tatham, and published as "A Group Photograph" in 2017? He not only tracked down every man in a particular formal WW1 group photograph in his possession, but also their pre- and post-war lives and careers, and even found their descendants. It's a remarkable enterprise, that took over twenty years; as his website (https://www.groupphoto.co.uk/) says, every man has been remembered "as if he were a part of your own family". Like all such acts of "remembrance", one hundred years on, it's both deeply moving and gloriously pointless. That's a recommendation, in case you were wondering!

Mike

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