Stephen Clarke :: Grandpa’s Photo’s

posted by Hannah Dawson June 30, 2014

5 years ago Dave Tomkins, an Australian art director, discovered a large box of slides and a clunky slide viewer from 1952 in the back of a cupboard while clearing out his grandfathers house after he had moved into a nursing home. Tomkins’ grandfather, Stephen Clarke, had never mentioned these photo’s before but after discovering this box he realised that not only was his grandfather a WWII Air Force navigator, a husband, a Dad but also that he was a great photographer. Tomkins then decided to use the photographs as a way to learn more about his grandfathers life.

‘I took them down to grandpa in the nursing home and showed him, hoping for a few amazing grandpa stories. I wanted to make him a book, something to give him more to think about in that home than catheter bags and test results.’ Unfortunately, Tomkins’ grandfather, couldn’t remember much about where and when the photos were taken.

The photo’s then became a project and were presented to the public for help in identifying the locations in these photos via a purpose built website featuring 100 of his grandfather’s best images, and an area for the site visitors to submit ideas on where they could have been taken. ‘The plan was to get thousands of people looking at and loving his photos, and to do an exhibition getting people to take the same photos today all over the world, and present it to him as final proof that he was a great photographer. He was the only person left to convince.’

Tomkins’ grandpa died peacefully, of old age, at 90 but his beautiful and charismatic photos live on. The site is still live and hunting for the photographs locations. So far he has learned that his grandpa had worked for an Australian jewellery franchise which allowed him to travel overseas and took along his Voigtlander Bessamatic, an old school camera with a handheld light meter. Tomkins is now planning to travel to the places in his grandfathers photos to recreate the images as they are today in honour of his grandpa and to learn and tell stories that could’ve been lost.

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