i am currently making a book for my father (mr. pyper senior) about the history of the small village in france where he lives: paris l’hopital… shown above is his house now and 120 years ago…
the material consists of a fascinating and very broad range of written and photographed documentation of the lives of the villagers from 1850 up to the 1950′s, including diaries and many personal accounts and artefacts
the train station is still standing although the tracks disappeared years ago…
the village blacksmith was the owner of a high quality technical camera which means that there is a huge series of postcard images of every aspect of village life, a fairly unusual occurence for such a small rural village at that time
i recently visited dad in france to scan all of the available material, the images are of such an amazing high quality that it is possible to zoom in endlessely to see details hidden in the background, here are a few examples i wanted to share…
