SALE ARTS TRAIL 2016 9TH / 10TH JULY For the 3rd year running I’m delighted to be taking part in the excellent Sale Arts Trail. It’s a wonderful event that has gone from strength to strength due to the dedication of the organisers Jo Lavelle and Sophie Nixon, who are both artists. I’ll be showing and selling work from my projects and also doing a walk and talk at dusk along the canalside. I’ve created an events page – CLICK […]
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 […]
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.
Livesey Street, 7.28AM The previous day marked 12 months since my first post on Not Quite Light. In that time I’ve become very familiar with the area stretching from Old Mill Street in New Islington to Empire Street in Cheetham Hill. And, like a parent noticing the subtle changes in their child’s development, I’ve seen a steady revision of the streets and wasteland that form the area in which I’ve photographed. There are few roads and alleyways that I haven’t […]
DUCIE STREET 7.18AM This was a morning when nothing much happened. The rain fell in great globules before declaring its ceasefire on the streets for rush hour. The need to keep the camera dry had helped me find a cubby hole on Ducie Street, a hidden entrance to a new building above the old canal. Beneath the bridge there was an opened sleeping bag and some cans, evidence that someone had been sleeping on the towpath. They were gone now […]
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 […]
STANLEY STREET 7.44AM The temperature was only just above freezing. Instinct took me to the high ground above Redbank, where I could watch dawn advance across the edge of the city centre. A slither of flame red sky topped the far rooftops and, as if a hundred Popes were being chosen, puffs of white steam rose into the blueing clouds from much needed heating units. Whilst I watched, a man came and stood next to me. “I’ve tried to capture […]
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 […]