One sunny afternoon during my time living in Tours in the second half of the 1990s, inspired by some similar creations that I had seen in a gallery in Bradford by David Hockney, I took my analogue SLR camera to the nearby fine art museum to take lots of photographs of one large scene – the facade of the museum with the cathedral in the background – with a view to later piecing them all together in a ‘stitched’ collage. I was so impressed with the results that I framed the work and it still hangs at the top of the stairs in the parents’ house in West Yorkshire (or perhaps they just put it up when they know I’m coming…)

It doesn’t require me to tell you that since my time in Tours, technology has moved on somewhat, especially in the realm of photography. Microsoft have a free app called Photostitch that does in minutes what it took me hours of fiddling with printed photographs to do nearly 20 years ago. I’ve just popped in to the gardens of the Musée des Beaux Arts in Tours (to check that Fritz is still well and truly stuffed) and have recreated my original work of art digitally. The brass plaque seems to have been replaced with a modern one for the sign but apart from that, it’s still the same view and still the same pair of feet! (What I didn’t have to contend with back in the 1990s were the WordPress image formatting issues…)

Perhaps someone in my family might take a picture of the original and email to me so I can post it below.

UPDATE 11/5/15: Courtesy of my father, here is the original picture taken in the late 1990s. I’d forgotten that the focus became the tree rather than the building but the comparison is nevertheless interesting. I’ll pop back in another 15 years to try again…