Fast Forward to 2025
Local lad still lives on same street
A local boy who was featured in the stunning 1978 photographs still lives on the same street nearly 50 years on.
Ataf Dukai is now 54 years old and was eight when the photographs were taken in 1978. He doesn't recall the images being taken but remembers fondly the area that was featured in Roger's images.
"There used to be a park on Kendal Street, and we used to gather there as youngsters. I used to live in Inkerman Street which was nearby."
Ataf attended Lammack Primary School at the time, before going onto Shadsworth Secondary School. He works in Blackburn and still lives on Inkerman Street, although he moved house when he got married.
He recalls how his family first notified him of the images when they appeared in the Lancashire Telegraph.
"I was shocked when my friends and family started to call me and said they had spotted me in some photos which came in the Telegraph and the free Council paper (The Shuttle).
"They recognised me instantly. The smile gave it away. We were playing near the swings and the photographer captured a really good shot. I can remember a few of my friends in that photo- we were just playing there in the park as we did most days. They were good times and great memories."
While the pictures have gone far and wide, Ataf is grateful for his own personal memories being captured.
"I am so glad that Roger took the time to take those photos. Kendal Street Park was really popular then. I haven't kept in touch with the people from the images, but I do see them from time to time in town, or in the community. Many have moved away, but these memories will last forever."
Another of the individuals featured in the images, who did not wish to be named, told One Voice Blackburn of his surprise and then shock.
"The pictures are brilliant, aren't they? They sum up the mood of the time perfectly. We did not have a lot, but we always had a smile on our face and life was a lot simpler.
"If you notice in the photographs there are very few cars. We had a lot of playing space in and round the Shear Brow and Whalley New Road areas. I showed the pictures to my children who are in their teens now, and they were amazed. It's an absolute credit to Roger to preserve them in such good condition."
Of the known people in the images many do not live in Blackburn anymore. Some have settled across the border into Yorkshire, while a few have moved to Preston. But most still have family in and around Blackburn.
Occupations also vary, from council workers to electricians and property developers to bus drivers. There is also a driving instructor. Most of the children attended schools such as St. Michael's and St. Johns and Cedar Street Primary.
Kabir Ali Sharif, completed his Business Diploma at Blackburn College, moved to Fulwood in Preston. He's a qualified England badminton coach and won the prestigious Nottingham Cup in 2014. There is even a local Blackburn with Darwen Councillor.
There are also a number of girls in the images, showing that they had as much fun as the boys. There is also a mix of heritage of the young people, as they included Pakistani, Indian, Bengali and white British - showing a true level of diversity.
The Man Behind the Lens
The man who took these amazing images now lives in Cheltenham. It was actually his fondness for geography rather than photography that took him to the location of the photoshoot back in 1978. Although he lived in Great Harwood, Roger Bracewell visited Blackburn regularly.
"I always liked geography at school. I was intrigued by the urban environments in which we lived in.
"We would drive over to Blackburn and walk through the tops, down to Little Harwood, eventually passing through Randal Street and the surrounding areas to reach the town centre.
"My mum was a teacher at All Saints in Clayton Le Moors. As she moved onto teaching in the junior section, she didn't want me at the same school so moved me to Horncliffe Prep School, and then QEGS. I was there for two years and that established a different connection between myself and Blackburn. It became my hometown."
Roger completed his A levels in Geography and went on to complete a degree in Town Planning at Newcastle University.
"My photography sat alongside those interests in geography, but I never sought to that professionally.
"My grandfather was a keen amateur photographer, and he had a little darkroom under the stairs. When he died, my grandmother asked me if I wanted his kit.
"I had been in the dark room and had seen him work on his photographs and was intrigued by it all.
"I was really keen to use photography as a way of recording my trips in the great outdoors. And that progressed from the Lake District to Scotland and the Alps, and eventually I went off to the Himalayas and on the Everest base camp and Nepal and Okra."
There has always been a balance in Roger's life between the great outdoors and photography. After having an extensive career in IT, planning, digital marketing and having his own business, Roger reignited the flame for his photography.
How I Rediscovered the Images from 1978
Around 2019 Roger managed to rediscover the images that he had taken 40 years previously thanks to a chance encounter with a brown envelope.
"I had a big filing cabinet and in one of the drawers there was a brown envelope. I opened it up and I found the negatives of the photographs I had taken in 1978.When I took the negatives out, I thought 'wow these are quite interesting'. I have a film scanner, so I decided to scan the negatives and bought them up on my computer screen.
Roger reached out to the Blackburn Museum Service and the libraries in Blackburn and received a response from Mary Painter at Blackburn Library. She shared the images on the cottontown website, as well as a local journalist, who published a short interview alongside the images in the Lancashire Telegraph.
The article was published around April or May 2019.
"It was Easter weekend where I woke up to a bunch of emails from people who had seen the spread on Lancashire Telegraph. There was a lot of talk around the town about the photographs with many people coming forward and stating that's me or that's so and so. From there people suggested I should come down to Blackburn so we could all meet up. We did that, and I got the opportunity to meet a few people and was able to build a portfolio of what they were getting up to now. I went back to Randal Street where the playground is, and a few other places where I originally took some of the photographs.
"Pictures like these wouldn't exist in family photo albums or on Instagram. I had pictures of their family history that was very personal to them."
Article published in One Voice Blackburn, Issue 13 Summer 2025. Pages 20-26
Transcribed by Shazia Kasim
