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Tag : photography

26 Jul 2015
swan street nomo manchester CIS

A PATCH OF GREEN, SWAN STREET 4.29AM

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 […]

07 Jul 2015
Jutland Street in Manchester at Dawn

JUTLAND STREET, MANCHESTER 3.48AM

JUTLAND STREET, MANCHESTER 3.48AM – Jutland Street is perhaps the oddest street in Manchester. There seems to be no hill for it to have emerged from and yet there it is, steep as a Pennine and cobbled just like streets in the black and white memories of our grandparents. I was perched at Jutland’s summit under a Bible bright moon, that was defiantly refusing to leave the dawn sky above Piccadilly’s modern structures. To my right two men scuttled down […]

30 Jun 2015

JUNE 21ST, THE LONGEST DAY, 2015

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 […]

17 Jun 2015
jersey street,ancoats, manchester

JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS, 6.33AM

JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS 6.33AM – There’s a sense of growing affection for Ancoats. No longer do people scurry from doorway to cab, fearful of being mugged, or “taxed” as I recently heard a Glaswegian refer to it. Ancoats is maybe the best of Manchester’s efforts to reinvent itself. The area used to pulse with endeavour, power and anger but now, whilst it still gives sanctuary to its ghosts, it increasingly neutralises their presence. Soon the streets around the dark brick […]

15 May 2015
new islington, ancoats, manchester

OLD MILL STREET, ANCOATS 4.27AM

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 […]

10 May 2015

THOMAS STREET, NORTHERN QUARTER 4.42AM

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 […]

09 Apr 2015

DUCIE HOUSE, LAYSTALL STREET 6AM

DUCIE HOUSE, LAYSTALL STREET, 6AM – Ducie House used to be where the legendary Home nightclub banged out its tunes, and where I was once refused entry for not wearing “VIP” shoes. It was the early 90s hub for creative talent in the city and housed numerous designers, magazines and other young, unruly Mancs plotting to rule the world from their Manchester base. Its ground floor is now occupied by Urban Splash, planners of New Islington, a work in progress, […]

07 Apr 2015

CAR PARK, DUCIE STREET, 6.33AM

CAR PARK, DUCIE STREET, 6.33AM – This morning, the first after the Easter holidays, I was awoken not by my alarm but by an industrious bird sensing dawn at 4.55am. There was a thin but effective mist hovering above the streets, and anyone that was out seemed to have bent down their heads, as if the weight of the fog was too much on this first day back to work. The sun was due to have risen at 6.33am but […]

04 Apr 2015

LEVER STREET, MANCHESTER 6.00AM

LEVER STREET, MANCHESTER 6.00AM – On the streets at dawn there is a relationship to the space which feels highly personal, a temporary sense of ownership even. Without the distraction of traffic and people and purifying daylight there exists an awareness of detail often absent without the collusion of shadow and streetlight. Also, and unbeknownst to them, I’ve begun to develop a relationship with the workers of the morning, the hidden heroes of our city, who have become familiar to […]

31 Mar 2015

JERSEY STREET, MANCHESTER 6.20AM

JERSEY STREET, MANCHESTER 6.20AM I was at a friend’s house recently and Scooby Doo was on. I noticed that the drawings of the deserted buildings were often depicted in the half light, with deep blue skies and vivid foreground colours. The sets were remarkably claustrophobic for a show loved by children, with no hint that there was another world beyond the blocked shadows. The first 2 days after the onset of British Summer Time brought gales that caused an unearthly […]

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