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Tag : DAWN CHORUS

03 May 2016

QUEEN STREET, SALFORD 4.32AM

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 […]

10 Apr 2016

NQL EXHIBITION

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.

19 Jan 2016
port street manchester at dawn

PORT STREET, 7.29AM

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 […]

14 Jan 2016
dantzic street,manchester,

DANTZIC STREET, 7.10AM

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 […]

12 Jan 2016
the dispensary on old mill street manchester

OLD MILL STREET, NEW ISLINGTON 7.16AM

OLD MILL STREET, NEW ISLINGTON 7.16AM In the still of dawn, before the roar of the day starts, the sound of birds chirruping is surprisingly strong amongst the sparse, winter branches and remains of old Manchester. I struggled to see any trees from where I was stationed, behind the Dispensary, which looked lost and lonely at the edge of a wasteland punctured and filled with pools of water, deep enough for your ankle to sink in. And yet still the […]

21 Dec 2015
angel meadow at dawn

ANGEL MEADOW 7.37AM

ANGEL MEADOW 7.37AM It wasn’t the Shortest Day after all. Never assume. I’d always thought that it fell on a fixed date, like Christmas, and didn’t think to check this basic fact. However, as I stood in Angel Meadow, I still believed that it was the Shortest Day. The unfinished moon lingering in the crisp, clear sky should have caused me to pause and wonder, but I’d decided that it was the Winter Solstice, and so therefore it was. Angel […]

20 Nov 2015
newton street manchester at dawn

NEWTON STREET & THE ACCIDENTAL TRICOLOUR 6.53AM

NEWTON STREET & THE ACCIDENTAL TRICOLOUR 6.35AM Following the awful events in Paris a few days previously, the world had become cloaked in the Tricolour. It was before my eyes wherever I turned. At the previous night’s concert, or in Blackpool at the weekend, and my social media timelines appeared to be entirely decorated in red, white and blue. I seemed to notice it even when it wasn’t there. I was gazing at the sandwich shop across from me, wondering […]

08 Nov 2015
garage on cheetham hill road

CHEETHAM HILL ROAD 6.06AM

CHEETHAM HILL ROAD 6.06AM I was house sitting for a friend in the south of the city, and he’d kindly lent me his car to use whilst he was away. It’s a lovely car. Big, white as an American’s teeth and full of fancy features that somewhat confuse me. I felt like a pimp as I parked it down a side road just off Cheetham Hill Road. I’d seen the picture I wanted to take a few days beforehand. It […]

26 Oct 2015
Gun Street Ancoats at dawn

GUN STREET, ANCOATS 6.32AM

GUN STREET, ANCOATS 6.32AM Today the clocks were turned back. Rain lingered like a truculent teenager, smearing the cobbled streets of Ancoats with a Brylcreem sheen. The area is a work in progress. Old buildings, like patients screened off in a hospital ward, are surrounded by scaffolding, as the heart of the world’s first industrial city is given a new life by Manchester’s pacemakers. Original brickwork and Victorian grandeur have been retained where possible, causing streets which until recently were […]

20 Oct 2015
strangeways at dawn

SHERBOURNE STREET, CHEETHAM HILL, 7.22AM

SHERBOURNE STREET, CHEETHAM HILL 7.22AM I was a still a boy when I first saw Strangeways prison. My mother drove past it, and the strange tower, rising up from amongst the dense walls, haunted me during that night’s sleep. Was this the future of men? Since then it’s inescapable presence, poking into the Manchester sky, has fascinated me. I’ve decided that Strangeways and Empire Street should form one of the boundaries for my project, and that the best place to […]

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