The Burns Archive; A Hundred Year Collaboration

After Jamie’s Grandma, Norma, passed away, he discovered a collection of photographic negatives on 120 film, cut and stuffed into a box and an old Ilford photographic paper envelope. These negatives, some as old as 100 years, had never been seen before by living descendants.

Jamie has spent the last 2 years scanning, restoring and archiving these works. Some of these photographs date back to the 1960s in his Grandma’s time of working in photography with fellow photographer, Joseph Connacher. The archive also includes her 1940s youth and with many predating her birth as Jamie’s Great-Great-Grandfather Robert Burns captures 1920s & 30s Northumberland and Scotland.

Jamie Melville’s continuous to work on this archive and is inspired over and over as he  continues a century-long collaboration, documenting Northumbrian and Scottish folk culture and landscape.   

A black-and-white photo of a mountain landscape with a small house in the foreground, a fence, and sheep grazing on the grassy area.
A black and white photograph of a woman sitting outdoors on a grassy hillside, with rolling fields and a few trees in the background.
Black and white photo of two women sitting and two women standing on a rocky shoreline by a river, with mountains and trees in the background. A dog is in the water near the shore.
Black and white photo of trees along a riverbank with a vintage car and a person standing nearby, under a sky with scattered clouds, vintage style.