I actually began in Macclesfield Forest, on the night of the full moon for my project ‘Our Future is Ancient’. After sitting in the car for several hours, watching the trees defend themselves by twisting and twirling in the gusting air as rain fell hard and consistently, I decided to return to the city. The day was just emerging as I was passing through the Piccadilly area, so I stopped to photograph. It’s an area still awaiting its fate as […]
PICCADILLY STATION 04.22AM April 2020 LISTEN TO DAWN AUDIO FROM PICCADILLY Manchester Piccadilly comes into view not long after the London Road has bent under the Mancunian Way, on the way in from Ardwick. This terminus station was built high off the ground, the trains arriving and leaving by tracks laid on viaducts of tainted, red brick. The surrounding area sets the standard for Mancs, being a place of compromised promise, of bold ambitions impaired by the nagging ghosts of […]
ANGEL MEADOW, 4.36am April 2020 Listen to the birdsong at dawn in Angel Meadow It is still dark when I arrive at Angel Meadow, just to the north of Manchester City Centre. It is during the time of Coronavirus and, since this unnatural hibernation, I’ve rarely left home. I’m unusually nervous; fearful not of this twilight space, but of other humans, who may carry death in a single breath. I pull my mask further above my nose and follow the […]
The work ‘From Old Mill To The End Of Empire’ was recently displayed as a slideshow as part of the Not Quite Light weekend. This is the slideshow. NOT QUITE LIGHT PRESENTS… from Simon Buckley on Vimeo.
Livesey Street, 7.28AM The previous day marked 12 months since my first post on Not Quite Light. In that time I’ve become very familiar with the area stretching from Old Mill Street in New Islington to Empire Street in Cheetham Hill. And, like a parent noticing the subtle changes in their child’s development, I’ve seen a steady revision of the streets and wasteland that form the area in which I’ve photographed. There are few roads and alleyways that I haven’t […]
DUCIE STREET 7.18AM This was a morning when nothing much happened. The rain fell in great globules before declaring its ceasefire on the streets for rush hour. The need to keep the camera dry had helped me find a cubby hole on Ducie Street, a hidden entrance to a new building above the old canal. Beneath the bridge there was an opened sleeping bag and some cans, evidence that someone had been sleeping on the towpath. They were gone now […]
EMPIRE STREET 7.13AM The dawn promised little. It was overcast, leaving the buildings below to supply the colour. When it’s like this the day is often slow to start, giving me time to consider what it is that I want to photograph. “From Old Mill To The End Of Empire” is very nearly at its end as a ‘stills’ project and so I decided that I would go to Empire Street, which forms one of the boundaries that I’ve set […]
STANLEY STREET 7.44AM The temperature was only just above freezing. Instinct took me to the high ground above Redbank, where I could watch dawn advance across the edge of the city centre. A slither of flame red sky topped the far rooftops and, as if a hundred Popes were being chosen, puffs of white steam rose into the blueing clouds from much needed heating units. Whilst I watched, a man came and stood next to me. “I’ve tried to capture […]
PORT STREET, 7.29AM I was helping a friend’s young boy build a Lego spacecraft the other day. It was too fiddly for him, and so I ended up spending an hour constructing a vision of the future whilst he went off and drew a house with crayons. I told his mum that when I was young we’d have a bag of bricks and make what we felt like. There was no need for instructions or showy add-ons that were too […]
DANTZIC STREET, 7.10AM I keep coming back to Dantzic Street. The bridges fascinate me, with the their dark, blue brick and tarnished tiles. I can find myself staring for quite some minutes at the silhouettes of people picked out by car headlights, as they pass under the rumbling ceilings which support the trains and trams. Sometimes, in the damp aftermath of Manchester rain I want to touch the walls, as if I’m earthing myself to the old city, and imagine […]