OLDFIELD ROAD 4.26AM There was warmth in the air, and I had hope when I set off. The sky was clear and there was the promise of rich colour in the dawn sky as I made my way down to Oldfield Road and James Street, near the war memorial and Islington Mill, which houses so many artists. It’s obvious that Salford now has ambition to change, with boards going up around derelict land like screens around the body of an […]
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 […]
CATHEDRAL APPROACH, 5.52AM When I opened my front door on this morning I actually flinched. I wasn’t expecting a thick mist, and the pool of light, spread by the fog around the street lamps, made the familiar jar my expectations, as if I’d entered the wrong world. In many ways I couldn’t have wished for better weather to start this new version of Not Quite Light. The work will take me across the Irwell into the cities of Manchester and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
BROUGHTON STREET, CHEETHAM HILL, 7.41AM I was driving home and Joni Mitchell came on the radio. “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” I sang along, of course, and then, when I’d got back and made a mug of strong tea, I was stirred to look revisit the folder of pictures from Not Quite Light that have had no work done on them, that are forgotten and perhaps destined to be […]
ANGEL MEADOW, IRK TOWN 7.29AM It’s been nearly a year since I started this incarnation of Not Quite Light. I was led to the idea by walking the unfamiliar streets around Irk Town, thinking of the lives buried under the turf of Angel Meadow which rests under the constant heat lamp glow of the CIS building. I’ve grown 12 months older now. Exploring my city in detail has brought me knew knowledge and a love and understanding of Manchester’s history […]
OLDHAM STREET 7.35AM The previous night I’d begun to read The Manchester Man, written by Mrs Linnaeus Banks and published in 1876. It details the life of Jabez Clegg, who was rescued in his cradle from the flooding River Irk, and adopted by the kind and hard working Simon Clegg, and Bess, his saintly daughter. This act of absolute altruism is set against the conditions of work and life that Mancunians had to exist in during the early 19th Century. […]
THE FISHMARKET, NORTHERN QUARTER 7.19AM On New Year’s Eve in 2014 I hadn’t even thought of Not Quite Light, I still had some vague notion of starting a personal project. Like most people I had little idea what the following twelve months would contain, and I’m wise enough to distill my sense of the new year into a simple, manageable equation of hope and fear. It felt symbolically important to me to get up for the last dawn of 2015 […]