RADIUM STREET, ANCOATS 5.43AM My alarm went off at 4am, and a couple of early birds were already chirruping as I turned on the light, causing me to hurry onto the street around 20 minutes later. In the the sky above me, though, there was not even a hint of daylight. For some reason, they’d begun their songs of hope a full hour before the dawn actually arrived, and I felt deceived. I pulled up my hood against the thumping […]
STORE STREET, PICCADILLY 4.43AM When I can see that the dawn will be clear and rain free, I try to look East, where, behind Ancoats, the sky begins its daytime shift soft and golden. As this morning began there was a stillness in the area, at odds with its past and its future intentions. Here, amongst tatty trees and unruly undergrowth, living is slowly encroaching upon working as factory units begin to quietly retreat, and flats trespass further into what […]
A PATCH OF GREEN, SWAN STREET 4.29AM I wasn’t intending to get up on this morning, but I was awoken by a panic dream, in which I was photographing in Manchester, but it was unrecognisable, and the dawn was taking away the darkness too quickly for me. So, unable to rest my mind, I left my bed and made my way down towards Victoria station. Along Swan Street two male friends were crossing towards the car park beneath the glowing […]
BELOW NEW UNION STREET, ANCOATS, 4.21AM When I awoke I had that moment a lot of us experience, of not being quite sure where I was. I wasn’t really free of sleep an hour later when I was staring at the sky, and waiting on the cusp of Redhill and New Union Street in Ancoats for a reluctant night to finally leave. A large, square board opposite me proclaimed the potential joy of the New Islington development, depicting a couple […]
JUNE 21st, THE LONGEST DAY, 2015 The Longest Day began with me dancing on a table with my flatmate’s girlfriend. He’d been out with her to some do, and they’d come in full of wine and had woken me up, demanding that I get my shoes on and go out with them. We compromised by dancing in the flat and so, when I left to photograph at just after 2.30am, my spirits were as high as a buzzard circling a […]
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 […]