Mark Sheeky - Old Photographs Lyrics

I found you all in a box of yellowed papers
You, this collection of portraits taken
Seventy, eighty, ninety, perhaps one-hundred years ago
All of you left forgotten in a box
There seemed to be no family resemblance
And perhaps no family members left to care about your whereabouts
Or the 80p price on each of your heads
Seven of you for five pounds the lady said sat
Behind the makeshift seventies Formica kitchen counter
Money was exchanged and no receipt given
You the seven, your story stored in boxes
No doubt similar to where your lives ended
But this portable mausoleum in brown paper bag scratchiness
Records only one moment
One fraction of a second of an existence
Was this the only time your face and features were so framed?
There are now today tens of thousands of tiny clicks
For every second, sacred, profane, mundane, myopic
But this moment why this moment captured?
To celebrate the new start?
To commemorate the feared end?
To encourage a spouse abroad with gun in hand?
Or a portrait for a formal occasion?
In your twenties and thirties you were not filled with nostalgia
Simply getting on, your clothes set you apart
But your haircuts are back in vogue if not fashion
You could be someone that I've met recently if it wasn't
For the Seventy, eighty, ninety, one-hundred years apart
And I wonder when did it all and for you?
Perhaps you knew me when I was a baby
Probably not
But this fragment of history I hold, all that's left of you
All but some marks in censuses and registers seemed so
Fragile and finite
Like life itself
One day you'll end up in a box again of this I am assured