Gibraltar from the air - a contemporary view
The photos I have used for this article - snapshots might be a better description - come from several very different sources. But they have one thing in common which I find historically interesting - they were all taken during the decade of the 1950s and therefore depict a Gibraltar that I should be able to recognise from those very far off days when I lived in it as a twelve year old.
Some of the postcard type photos were apparently published by Photo Goldner in Paris. I have no idea who these people are but my guess is that they may simply have been a photo developing service - which more or less confirms my other guess which is that some of the photos I have included were taken by tourists.
Most of the examples were probably taken by locals, some were obviously taken by the same person on the same day - and none of them - in my view - particularly original or artistic. The original copies were in black and white - I have tinted them sepia for my own aesthetic reasons - although one could argue that I should have used a rose-tint instead.
Or perhaps I should have left them in black and white. Proof-reading what I have written has simply confirmed just how ill-informed I was - ignorant is probably a better word. I suspect that I was not alone. Most of the boys of my generation seemed to have lacked a spirit of adventure.
Generally we appear to have been a rather self-satisfied bunch complacently aware that our life on the Rock was infinitely preferable to that led by most people living in our sister Spanish town of La Linea. I suspect we were also often indifferent to the grinding poverty that greeted us whenever we visited the place to enjoy ourselves. It makes me sad to think so but . . . . that was the way it was in those so-called “good old days”
Gibraltar from La Linea (With acknowledgements to Ildefonso Herrera Martos)
As there are nearly 50 photographs involved I have divided them up - together with my comments - into three sections each of which can be accessed from the following links.
1950s - Gibraltar - Rose-tinted Snapshots - 2
1950s - Gibraltar - Rose-tinted Snapshots - 3