photographing at dawn Archives - Page 3 of 5

04 Feb 2016

LIVESEY STREET, 7.28AM

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 […]

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28 Jan 2016

DUCIE STREET 7.18AM

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 […]

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21 Jan 2016

STANLEY STREET 7.44AM

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 […]

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19 Jan 2016

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 […]

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14 Jan 2016

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 […]

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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 […]

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05 Jan 2016

OLDHAM STREET 7.35AM

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. […]

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30 Dec 2015

ROCHDALE ROAD 7.17AM

ROCHDALE ROAD 7.17AM I’d been out the night before in The Millstone pub, one of my favourite places in Manchester. I was watching the delicious chaos unfold before me when I noticed a woman that I’d had a drink with a few months earlier. Her name was Michelle, a born and bred Mancunian, who was drunk and sad. Her long, sequined dress wasn’t comfortable on her, and she had to walk with care in her high heels. We ended up […]

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21 Dec 2015

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 […]

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24 Nov 2015

WHITTLE’S CROFT, MANCHESTER 6.17AM

WHITTLE’S CROFT 6.17AM The rain was bouncing off my hood, the tippy-tap noise being my only company in this small side street tucked away behind Ducie House. I saw no-one and no-one saw me. If I’d been more of an animal than my modern, city self I’d have gone to shelter on higher ground. The lemming leaves lay dead on the ground, except for two which remained like young lovers looking into the sunset on the last night of their […]

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Tag : photographing at dawn

LIVESEY STREET, 7.28AM

DUCIE STREET 7.18AM

STANLEY STREET 7.44AM

PORT STREET, 7.29AM

DANTZIC STREET, 7.10AM

OLD MILL STREET, NEW ISLINGTON 7.16AM

OLDHAM STREET 7.35AM

ROCHDALE ROAD 7.17AM

ANGEL MEADOW 7.37AM

WHITTLE’S CROFT, MANCHESTER 6.17AM

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