It started as a joke way back in 2009. At times there were hundreds of participants and at other times just a loyal few. Sepia Saturday has continued, through good times and bad, providing a platform for people to share their photographic-based memories. I was looking back through the archives recently and I came across this "Sepia Saturday Manifesto" which I produced fifteen years ago. Reading through it, it still seems relevant today, so it is worth a reprint.
A MANIFESTO FOR SEPIA SATURDAY.
1. We belong to a favoured generation: the first generation of the digital age. Whilst our ancestors have valiantly attempted to preserve their own unique history in scraps of written narrative and faded and creased photographs, we have the unique ability to fix these memories for ever as our legacy to future generations.
2. Scanning, blogging and digital storage provide us with the means of preserving the past, but we also have a duty to preserve the stories and images of those that contributed to our society as we know it. Whilst we can leave to academic historians the task of documenting the lives of the rich and famous, we believe that the most remote second-cousin and the most distant of maiden aunts has made a unique contribution to the lives that we lead. Each one of us has a duty to help preserve the stories of these builders of the modern world.
3. Whilst images alone are fascinating documents, images with words - be they simple half-remembered names and dates or gripping narrative histories - are even better. The synthesis of image and words provides the most effective insight into the past.
4. "Sepia" is an alliterative convenience rather than a descriptive criterion. Let our images be in sepia, in black and white or in full colour : what matters is the message and not the medium.
5. We recognise that we have not only a duty to share our past but also to ensure that it is effectively preserved. Whilst images printed on photographic paper and words written in old notebooks fade with time, they have proved, in most cases, remarkably resilient over time. Perhaps one of the greatest dangers facing the millions of digital images and the endless pages of computerised words we produce today is that they can so easily be lost by the pressing of a wrong button or by the hacking of a troubled soul. We recognise and we accept our responsibility to back-up and securely save.
The two main principles of Sepia Saturday have remained throughout the last 800 weeks - SAVE AND SHARE. We have a duty to save and to share our photographic heritage. Therefore, for the eight hundredth time, I am inviting you to join in with Sepia Saturday by posting a photographic memory and adding a link to the list below on or around Saturday 8th November 2025.
Thanks for supporting Sepia Saturday for the last 16 years ... hopefully we will have a few more years in us yet.
8 comments:
I joined Sepia Saturday in 2013 at the urging of ScotSue & I have enjoyed being a member & contributing so much! It has given me a chance to meet new people from many different places - some of whom I've actually been lucky enough to meet in person. I love sharing photographs & memories & thoughts to go with them. And I'm always interested to see how others interpret & match the prompts each week as there's generally more than one way to look at a photograph. I remember several years ago one of us Sepians sharing a post based on manhole covers & recall thinking "What the heck?" The prompt picture was of a woman with an umbrella crossing a wet street in the rain? When I looked more closely at the photo there was a manhole cover in the street where she was walking. That post opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities when looking at a picture to match and oh boy, but do I have creative fun with that sometimes. :)
You sum up the delights of Sepia Saturday perfectly - a community of friends who share a passion for discovering hidden delights in old photographs.
I’ve no idea how long I’ve been a devotee of SS. But it has certainly been a fun pursuit each week, looking for any and all photos which might or might not meet the prompt. Then there is the fun of reading other’s posts, which have gone to the moon and back! Thanks so much, Alan, for providing a stimulating avenue for creativity.
I echo so much of what Gail and Barbara say. I have been on SS for , I think, over 10 years and enjoy trying to match the prompt and marvellingn of how others find something small to link with it. I am now running short of new photographs which gives me an additional challenge. Keep going Alan!
I'm not sure when I first found Sepia Saturday or when I first linked a post here myself. I know that when I first started going through a lot of inherited old postcards and photos, I had not yet found this place to share my findings - but somewhere along the way I did, and having a place to share my discoveries (and learn from others!) became helpful in keeping up the project. So thanks to Alan (and everyone else participating) for keeping it up all these years! - For this week, I'm reposting one of my earliest post from my Greetings from the Past blog, from February 2012, and a postcard entitled "Hands Across the Sea".
Okay, I've managed to post my story late but it's still Saturday, at least for me, (though by the time I post this comment it will be tomorrow). I've taken the theme of portraits of men posing next to a very big mechanical thing. In my case not a car but a musical instrument.
For nearly every weekend over the past 15 years I've been inspired by Alan's clever choice of images to find a match in my collection of photos and postcards and write a story about it. As soon as I post it, I look at Alan's next prompt and start working on a new puzzle. What do I see? Do I have a match for this?
What initially attracted me to Sepia Saturday was discovering a kind of blogger club of people who, like me, are fascinated by old photos. Over the years the one single thing I've learned from Alan and my fellow Sepia bloggers is that every photo has a story to tell. Sometimes it's a history hidden in the background. Other times it's a family tale retold by generations of ancestors to descendants. Often it is about a picture showing the contrast of something old replaced by something new. And of course there are the countless snapshots and portraits linked together in vast family trees whose tangled branches are now as familiar to me as my own family.
I miss the days when dozen of bloggers joined in Alan's game. From time to time I go back to those early SS digests just to check the links and see who is still writing. It's sad to see that most bloggers are offline now. Yet I'm very grateful to Alan for keeping his internet pub open and allowing we stalwart few to meet up every weekend and share a story and an old photo, or two, or more. Thank you, Alan, And thank you, fellow bloggers, then and now.
I participated a bit years ago and I plan on doing so again! I was SO afraid you wouldn't be here. I will join in the next week!
I am not sure if I have broken rules! I collect old photos - use them for inspiration to draw and paint. Here I have written a short story (144 word maximum) ... So this isn't MY history and it certainly is fiction. SO... let me know and I will correct myself with next week's addition. TY! It is 3:30 am here in Michigan and I WILL read and enjoy everyone's entry's tomorrow.
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