A lot of people helped with the production of our book ‘The Walker Brothers and Their Legacy’ (see the ‘Forgotten History’ pages) but one of the nicest surprises was when a photograph of Milton Walker turned up in Guyana. The photo was considered so precious by the family that they didn’t want to entrust it to the postal service and so we had to wait for a relative to visit England and bring it with them.
Maria, co-author of the book, had never seen this photo of her father in his army uniform before so you can imagine how she felt.
It was small, a bit torn and tea stained. But, in spite of these drawbacks it was a wonderful portrait of a young man about to embark on a great adventure. We debated whether to include it in the book as it was (authentic) or whether we should try to get it enhanced to improve the clarity. In the end we opted to enhance the image and that’s what you will see in the book if you buy it. We think we made the right decision but judge for yourself, here are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ images:
The job was entrusted to Stuart Gleave. He described what he did as being a bit like performing a skin graft, copying a ‘clean’ piece of the picture and pasting it in over a damaged area. You can see many examples of his work at http://www.stuartgleavephotography.com/