CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE THE SLIDESHOW FULL SIZED These pictures were taken on a visit to Gloucester, New England in 2018. It’s America’s oldest fishing port, and is is still very much a working town, rather than a place tourists visit. Whilst I was there I discovered that Edward Hopper had visited the town in the 1920s, and one of the paintings he did there, mansard Roofs, launched his career at the age of 40. I can understand […]
It’s strange, that which sits in our minds, quietly influencing us without us knowing. I was near the top of Hampden Street in Gloucester, where it’s topped neatly by Hovey. It runs steeply downhill, and affords a view of other toytown houses sprinkled on the hill opposite. In the evening, the sun sets behind the houses. Instinct had brought me there, not a guide book, and I was sure I’d found just the place to take my photograph. A black […]
Earlier this year, I was commissioned by Place First to document the first phase of the Welsh Streets regeneration project in Liverpool 8. The series of terraced streets are being refurbished so that once again the area will be again a thriving community. There was a strong campaign in the local area to have the houses saved from demolition and the project shows that not always do existing dwellings have to be flattened and replaced with high rise structures. In […]
BLUEPRINT STUDIOS, COLLIER STREET, 7.18AM The windows of Blueprint Studios glowed red, like a 4 bar electric heater. Behind me, an upstairs room in The Eagle Inn beamed bright tungsten light towards Trinity Way, like a lighthouse for those stumbling in search of the past. Behind both brick buildings the new, taller version of ancient Greengate had emerged, not quite facing in the same direction. I considered if the demolition of the Victorian architecture, and the emergence of the tower […]
WATER STREET 7.07AM Yet again the weather forecast had failed me. Rain spattered into my glasses as the clouds above surged into the distance, following an unseen agenda that all below would simply have to cope with. Beneath where I was standing, near the Victoria and Albert hotel, a million droplets strafed the Irwell, causing the gulls to twist and swirl as if trying to throw off an attacking fighter plane. A business man stomped towards his large BMW, frowning […]
THE MEADOW, 6.31AM To reach Salford Meadow you have to zig-zag through small streets past newly built houses, where cars glimmer in drive ways just big enough to contain them. It’s obvious which are the kitchens and bathrooms in these homes, as they are the only ones lit. People briefly appear and swig swiftly from mugs, or materialise upstairs as monotone bulks behind frosted glass. I parked at the end of a fancily illuminated footbridge and made my way down […]
SILK STREET, 6.23AM There’s an area just off Bury New Road that I’ve wanted to photograph for a while. It’s a place still of the old city, where mixed Mancunians chance their lives on numerous ventures, trading goods of varying quality and legality from around the world. As the streets lead away from the main road there is a sense of decay, and clustered rubbish sullies the paths and kerbs, as if a great tide has swept in, depositing the […]
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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 […]