likes, loves and lusts

then and now

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This is Elly and Pim, my mother's second cousins (as far as i can tell) in Holland.
For a couple of years now I've been working on a project to preserve the memories and stories of the Dutch side of my family. Initially I tried to find out who each person in each picture was, but that proved very daunting, so now I'm just scanning and uploading all the pics and saving them on Flickr.

One day I'll go back and add the names and stories.

It's proved to be a fascinating project that has reconnected me with family I never knew I had - like Elly and Pim above. They have a family tree of the van Hoofts (my gran's side) running back to 1374! I don't know who did the work to put that together, but it's incredible.
It's also shown me a world I've never seen before - immigrants arriving at a new harbour, family portraits in a country devastated by war.

See an older world you never knew here.