JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS 6.33AM – There’s a sense of growing affection for Ancoats. No longer do people scurry from doorway to cab, fearful of being mugged, or “taxed” as I recently heard a Glaswegian refer to it. Ancoats is maybe the best of Manchester’s efforts to reinvent itself. The area used to pulse with endeavour, power and anger but now, whilst it still gives sanctuary to its ghosts, it increasingly neutralises their presence. Soon the streets around the dark brick […]
OLD MILL STREET, NEW ISLINGTON, ANCOATS 4.16AM – I’ve recently returned from North Carolina where people were astonished to hear, over an honest glass of Moonshine, that Manchester’s economic fortunes were so badly affected by the American Civil war. I told them about the statue of Abraham Lincoln, and the principled boycott of southern cotton that led to real hardship in the city. I also met a man who’d been part of the team that developed GPS mapping, who now […]
CHATLEY STREET, CHEETHAM HILL 5.26AM – I’ve always wondered what was in the minds of the Victorian men that designed, and then constructed, the strange phallic tower that rises up from the centre of Strangeways Prison. Maybe the architect, Alfred Waterhouse, was obsessed with reminding the incarcerated criminals within of their weakness and powerlessness. Today, the surrounding streets see men slope past in their shiny cars, looking for women that will gratify their needs at a price that can never […]
HILTON STREET, MANCHESTER 4.31AM – It had rained in the early hours of the new day, and the roads were glistening with colour as fresh as a newly woven magic carpet. Any birdsong was drowned out by the raucous calls of girls and boys dressed in their finery, still away with the fairytale world of escape afforded them by the Manchester potion of music and drink. Dreamy eyed couples kissed at bus stops, desperate boys leapt in front of my […]
OLD MILL STREET, 4.27AM – Old Mill Street, where the Ancoats Dispensary still exists, is at one edge of my project, the other being Strangeways. From redemption to restitution I suppose. This area, once the industrial core of Manchester, is now known as New Islington and was supposed to be the vanguard of urban development on this side of the city. And then the recession came. This particular morning the sky was clear, and the colours rich. It reminded me […]
THOMAS STREET, 4.42AM – It was my first time photographing on a Saturday morning. The sodium lamps, neon and first gasp of dawn daylight created a filmic atmosphere, causing the buildings to look like the grand vision of a set designer, and the people in them extras, sent out on cue by a director eager to create the illusion of reality in this strange hour. This area of Manchester has, for centuries, been where people have come for pleasure, to […]
OLDHAM ROAD, 4.57AM, ELECTION DAY – The alarm went off at 3.50am, and the birds were already chattering excitedly at the new dawn, like children up too early on their birthday. The sky hung darkly above, revealing patches of blue that reflected in puddles across empty streets and pitted car parks. The soft whirr of a milk float was all that intruded on the songs being whistled around me. I’d decided the night before on what I was going to […]
DERBY STREET, CHEETHAM HILL 5.15AM – At 4AM, which is now my waking up time for Not Quite Light, I feel like death and it is only the thought of life that takes me from my tomb and out into the day. It was dark and felt as dawn could never arrive. Even the birds seemed reluctant to announce dawn this morning, as the consistent rain spattered onto the pavements. I made my way up towards Cheetham Hill to an […]
BACK ST. GEORGE’S ROAD 6.31AM – It rains a lot in Manchester, or so we become programmed to believe. Water follows our Mancunian lives each and every year, washing the streets and buildings. But not the cars it seems. I’d found the great American car wash by accident, and have never yet seen it in any other state than behind a barred gate and utterly shut. I’d love to know what, in particular, makes it an American car wash. Is […]
LUDGATE HILL 6.03AM – I’ve always felt that the soul of Not Quite Light lies in the streets around Angel Meadows. I keep being drawn back there, fascinated by the history of that small patch of ground that contains the bodies of 40,000 Mancunian ancestors, and that also inspired the work of Engels and Marx. There are buildings and towns that trade on ghosts and hauntings but never have I felt fearful of being so close to the bones of […]