The project “You Live With Us, We Live You”, which was commissioned by 5 Plus Architects, is now on sale as a limited edition book. 10 buildings are featured – 6 in Manchester and 4 in London. Each chapter contains a written piece and 6 images from the work. All of the money is going to charity. To purchase the book click here. You can also see a gallery of the photographs here. There is a podcast inspired by the […]
I’ve been intending to do a podcast for Not Quite Light for some time, and now they begin! I’ve published the first one. It’s inspired by the project “You Live With Us, We Live You” which was commissioned by 5 Plus Architects. I go on the roof of The Hive building in Manchester to watch dawn come up over the city, and chat to Jon Matthews from 5 plus. I also talk with whistling Way, the security guard on duty […]
Canal boats traditionally travel at 4 miles per hour, which roughly equates to the speed of a brisk walking pace, and this significantly determines how the waterway is experienced. It allows us time to observe, whilst travelling, in a way often lost to us in the modern era. It’s also a constant thread back to our ancestors, who also would have journeyed along the Bridgewater Canal with the same measured progress. Over the four seasons of the year, I’ll be […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Not Quite Light project is featured in the latest Monitor Creative online magazine. CLICK HERE
NEW BRIDGE STREET 3.10AM – 4.50AM Since starting this particular series of Not Quite Light I’ve realized quite how little I know about the Irwell. Its path is that of an uncoiling snake, and I couldn’t easily draw it out if asked. It’s a river that, during the industrial revolution, both Manchester and Salford turned their backs on, polluting it for profit, and it often feels hidden away like an embarrassing member of the family that they don’t know what […]
COW LANE, SALFORD 3.14AM – 4.15AM The turning point of the year, the Longest Day, had not long ended when I arrived. The much heralded Strawberry Moon was losing its fight with overpowering clouds that, for now, reflected prismatic city lights and lunar brilliance but which, at daybreak, would be revealed as grey and unloved. I settled next to a cement works that hummed and clanked, but revealed no human form, despite there being several illuminated huts. Away in the […]
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. […]
SADLER’S YARD 7.20AM When my kids were little I used to love building them sandcastles. Hours would be spent constructing walls, towers and moats. I even used to dig channels to aid the sea in its inevitable destruction of something I’d been proud to have built. And then tomorrow, the beach would again be the same, but changed, as new fathers elbowed their children out of the way during their quest to achieve as much as they could before the […]