The story behind the 1940s snaps bought at auction

Photographs from the 1940s bought at auction have been turned into a picture book.

Damian Sealey, who runs Absolutely Nice Vintage in Carlisle, discovered the box of house clearance snaps at H&H Auction House and put in a bid.

He managed to track down the grandson of photographer Norman Fairlam, of Haltwhistle, Northumberland, and found out they were taken in Tripoli, Libya, and featured his family.

Mr Fairlam’s grandson, Jon, described him as an “avid photographer”, who was an RAF squadron leader during World War Two, and a “super grandfather”.

Mr Sealey said he and his business partner, Mark Howlette, liked to develop and display forgotten cine film on YouTube.

“We just want to preserve people’s memories – they were taken for a reason,” he said.

A black and white photograph of a boy with blond hair pointing into the sky. — Mr Fairlam’s son, Malcolm, features in a lot of the photographs [Absolutely Nice Vintage]

He said he was drawn to the collection’s “nice composition.”

“We thought he had a good eye. We didn’t know if he was a photographer, but they were all intimate, quiet moments, a lot of them, not posed,” Mr Sealey said.

“The sort of candid snapshot style we like.”

Two black and white photographs side by side. The one on the left depicts arches and on the right a man is lying on a white wall in the foetal position. — Photographer Norman Fairlam, who was born in 1911, took the photographs in the 1940s [Absolutely Nice Vintage]

The snaps were taken in Tripoli, Libya, in the late 1940s, when Mr Fairlam was working on an airport project.

They feature his wife Bessie and son Malcolm.

He later worked at Newcastle Airport before retiring as head of air traffic control in the 1970s. He died in 2005.

Mr Sealey said he had a big response when he posted the photographs on social media with people urging him to turn them into a book.

He added the resulting work, Lot 455, was a way of “preserving history”.

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