My Dad was a dental technician and in World War II he served abroad with the RAF, taking his mobile laboratory into North Africa, but mainly to Italy. He treasured his time in Italy in particular and brought back a huge album full of memories that I remember looking through as a child. My Mum apparently insisted that all the photos of his girlfriends were removed and destroyed, so the album had many gaps in it. Later, the album itself disppeared and it is only recently that we have discovered the pictures that were in it, all neatly removed from its pages. Still no girlfriends I'm afraid, unless we count the RAF dog he was allocated for security - Ingrid. We have one picture of Ingrid, who on the back sends her best wishes.
Arthur Riley in WWII in his RAF mobile laboratory
Ingrid, with best wishes
The purpose of this blog though is to share a rather charming set of postcards, printed in Milan, but of Venice. He clearly made a trip here as there is an annotation of the back of the postcard of the Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Suspiri) which is quite evocative. The pictures are very dark, very moody, and seem to be hand coloured photographs (or very good paintings), and they make the point that it is not necessary for images to be sharp. Obviously some need to be sharp, but the feeling of the image is what counts, and we can become a little obsessed with sharpness for the sake of it. Unfortunately, these have not scanned very well, and I might try shooting them with a camera instead, but hopefully enough remains of their character to make them interesting.
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