THE CRESCENT, SALFORD 5.20AM I felt panicky this morning, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I struggled to balance my tripod on the central reservation of the main through route from the East Lancs, and although Manchester looked beautiful in the steamy early morning, it seemed just too far away to bring me what I wanted. People passing by on their way home from night shifts, stooped and unlikely to make old bones, looked at me with concern, acknowledging as […]
WATER STREET, MANCHESTER 5.36AM It would seem that we can no longer expect the summer to remain in its expected place anymore. The warmth of remembered childhood days has now slipped beyond the start of the new school year, and September has become the month when we go to work in our shirt sleeves, as did I on this room temperature dawn. When it is this balmy, and I’m out under a night sky, with the world lit and coloured […]
RIVERSIDE, SALFORD, 5.28AM Often I’m already en route when I decide where I’ll go to photograph, simply following the course of fate and instinct to bring me to my destination. And, on this late summer morning, I fetched up at the River Irwell near Adelphi Street, along whose muddied sides human settlement is once again thriving. As I turned down neat, new streets, and came suddenly upon a footbridge, I realised how little I knew of the river’s course once […]
NEW BRIDGE STREET 3.10AM – 4.50AM Since starting this particular series of Not Quite Light I’ve realized quite how little I know about the Irwell. Its path is that of an uncoiling snake, and I couldn’t easily draw it out if asked. It’s a river that, during the industrial revolution, both Manchester and Salford turned their backs on, polluting it for profit, and it often feels hidden away like an embarrassing member of the family that they don’t know what […]
COW LANE, SALFORD 3.14AM – 4.15AM The turning point of the year, the Longest Day, had not long ended when I arrived. The much heralded Strawberry Moon was losing its fight with overpowering clouds that, for now, reflected prismatic city lights and lunar brilliance but which, at daybreak, would be revealed as grey and unloved. I settled next to a cement works that hummed and clanked, but revealed no human form, despite there being several illuminated huts. Away in the […]
FROM APRIL 13TH 2016 ‘From Trinity To The Crescent’ is the second Not Quite Light Project. It will explore the area around the River Irwell, which is used as the physical border between the cities of Manchester and Salford. This will take me from just below Strangeways along Chapel Street and Deansgate, and as far as the Crescent, as the A6 heads away from the city centre. The history between Salford and Manchester is fascinating, and illustrates my view that […]
ST.MARY’S PARSONAGE, MANCHESTER 3.29AM There is no more accurate an alarm than nature. The first, single call of dawn this morning was sharp and distinct, and I actually saw it happen. A blackbird, unaware that I’d snook down a small alley off St. Mary’s Parsonage, and onto a paved area that looked over the Irwell from Manchester, was perched on spiked rails to my right, and was signalling the arrival of a new day. When I turned to look it […]
CHAPEL STREET, SALFORD, 3.42AM I haven’t read much about it but, apparently, having two sleeps during the night used to be normal. Now that dawn is around 3am I’ve had to start sleeping at around nine-thirty, get up to do my work at about two, and then go back to sleep at around six. The consequence of this is that my mind is swamped by vivid dreams, often about my life already lived melding awkwardly with the one I now […]
MARK ADDY, NEW BAILEY, 4.01AM Bailey. Such an English name. Indeed, the last time I visited this area was to witness a grown man arrive on a boat festooned in Union Jacks, bolstered by a giddy entourage belting out Land Of Hope And Glory as the vessel came to rest at the Mark Addy pub. Since then the Irwell has flooded, suffocating the Salford landmark with cloying mud, and perhaps closing it forever. Manchester and Salford seemed to turn their […]
QUEEN STREET 4.32AM This dawn was, I imagine, how most people think of daybreak. The sky was a swirled mess of blues and greys, with the clouds pink and fluffy like the pom-poms on a show poodle. Birds sweetly sang in trees beyond my eyes and geese on the nearby Irwell barked distant warnings. The streets were almost free of traffic, whilst in the apartments behind me, some lights still glowed, although no moving silhouette gave away any life within […]