Eyelevel Photography

2012-02-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

CHURCH STREET 2012

2012-02-01T03:31:00.000-08:00

CHURCH STREET c.1990s

A brief retrospect on Church Street, Preston

2012-02-01T02:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you have to work from memory alone. From what I remember of Church St in Preston in the early 1980s was that it was very run down. There was a second hand music shop (which I bought a bass guitar from to start a punk band!); a pet shop (when this closed down in '83, the Youth Opportunity Programme - YOPs, which included myself, took 2-3wks painting it.) There was a closed down Iron & Wire cutters merchants (built in 1851) that still stands today and features in some of the photographs that involve these neglected spaces.

Action Records record shop (still there today) moved into the area in 1981, there were hotels, 4 pubs, a coin collector, Frank Clarke's army and navy surplus store, a very old church, several jewellers...It was very low key, not funky or arty, it was a very working corner of town. The flaking paint, the sooted brick and the broken glass were real enough.

In terms of today 'regeneration' is a redundant term for areas like this. It means nothing. Awkward spatial problems like Church Street will not be solved by a clear and sudden flow of capital. Growth isn't just a term that should reflect financial gain. This part of town/city is a serious reminder that what's needed is something much more organic and cultural, it should be nurtured and supported with commitment. The Northern Quarter in Manchester is a prime example.

Several buildings had been left to fall into disrepair so that eventually they were condemned and demolished. The Real McCoy was a 'burger bar' for post clubbers in the 80/90s. When it closed it was left to rot. Twenty years later a new block of generic and faceless quick-builds that are swooping the inner city networks, was thrown up. A clean and shining start to the millennium. It became the new city PAD (Preston Art & Design) gallery...a hub for artists and crafts people in the heart of the 'regeneration'. It served the creative community well. The idea to locate it next door to where I bought a bass guitar, which I'd completely forgotten about, was a strange joy. Unfortunately, this new project funded by the Council only lasted 3-4 years; it moved to an old post office building in the city centre...and very quickly died. The fact that it closed down in the centre is sad in itself. But apart from pulling money from the arts, the government were basically, sealing off that area of Church Street, an area that desperately needed something.

2012-01-05T04:32:00.000-08:00

This small venture in the bustling corporate tangle of Manchester is a real show of adventure and spirit. Surrounded by A-roads and overall busy-ness its difficult to understand how it exists let alone manages.

An usual space: Hardwick Place was once a street. Left for many years it has become something of a hybrid of liminal space and 'adopted' free space, quietly managed by locals who have put a few plants in nearby to their back yards. Evidence of the past street is clear. Bollards still line up and a sign still throws a void warning. The image and the suggestions that swirl within reminds me of a 'garden centre' in the centre of Manchester. Its an unlikely location, but something about it is reminiscent of Eugene Atget's Zone in Paris. Although both images conduct slightly separate issues about the paradigms of space they are collectively inhabiting the same debates of dilemmas that are cohesive to the arguments.

These receding spaces

2011-12-15T04:39:00.000-08:00

What to do with disused space is a daily task local authorities ask. Developers would normally move in or fees could be quickly reaped from the quick-fire solution of a car park. Space can be used and does get used in an independent manner. Art squatters, performers and people at play have long been documented. Guerilla gardening is creeping in, orderly though it may seem is closely related to us wanting nature to reclaim unwanted spaces.

Whatever it may be it puts its mark back into the urban swirl of change and domineering zones of commerce. There is a growing trend of not-so-much nostalgia but of the need for something that summons a past, a story, a history...something that shows us that something has gone but not forgotten. Ironically it is some of the spaces with traces of before lives that is just about left. We see the beauty in derelict things and we are able to reflect or meditate, for now at least.

The zones of our cities are new, calculated, clinical and carefully mapped for instruction so that space recedes and all pasts with it too...

2011-12-08T04:44:00.000-08:00

Wastelands pose questions about what Manuel Castells calls space of flows; the internal city rhythm of commodity, high finance, technology, communication, distribution and production...The wasteland is a closed zone to this capitalistic generated network.

New things can begin from nothing but in this way a neglected, forgotten or disused space can turn off any impending investor/developer, especially if an area in need of regeneration is stretched over a long period. Unblessed towns without the fast track of elusive investors slip back in times of recession to their former rugged selves. Some authorities in Lancashire such as those in Preston have been holding on to the dream of investment from major companies but are tied until it happens. In an area closely overlooked by the city's impressive brutalist structure that is the bus station, is a block of varying wastelands. Some have laid waiting since the recession of the 1990s. And new pockets are opening up.

Between, Marginal but not Beneath

2011-11-18T02:01:00.000-08:00

Writing on the works of Victor Turner in What is Liminality? Charles La Shure* drives toward people and hierarchal forms in society, by saying, "...in spatial terms, they are in between (liminality), on the edges (marginality), and beneath (inferiority)."

The same could be said of these city-spaces except I would be prompted to mention that with will of community and legal procedure, liminal city spaces can be 'managed' and therefore be removed from the eyesore category and evolved into an alternative spaces that doesn't require much in the way of financial and time input to recreate a 'free space'.

www.liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/*

Oct 2005.*

Dilemmas of space

2011-11-17T07:54:00.000-08:00

The spaces that have laid so long echo that ghostly voice of a changed landscape; the problems of industry and investment. The spaces left go on like uncertain pauses and unanswered questions.

Since the mid-1990s Manchester has developed itself as a very strong cultural centre and with its spirit has bounced back into the Northern arena as being an important city as any classy European one with much investment, new industries and strong bonds with corporations and business capital.

Smaller, peripheral towns and cities, like Preston don't have the same clout or force and its for these reasons the challenge of interest and potential investment is less on a relative scale.

Church Street in the city's heart has a list of wastelands and scarred spaces.

2011-11-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

There tend to various stages of wasteland. The first I'd consider as 'vacant land' where it is both obviously available for development but also open to interpretation. Whether the idea of entering a site is deemed as trespassing or not it is certain that youths and some younger children will want to explore. Usually the land has remained fenced off open space for some time. Problems arise from time scales. The next stage tends to be the 'liminal stage' where it feels neither owned or remembered. Other activity begins to happen. People pass through, walk their dog, motorbikes get dumped, kids play. It becomes an 'other' space.

In Preston, Lancashire a site (below) is part of an area that requires regeneration. It was once a Booths depot but has since laid open, although this site is one of those rare ones in this case that is awaiting development. Once an area needs regeneration it is difficult to develop interest.

'Friendship' Social Club, Percy Street

2011-11-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

This space was once a workers social club. Its now wasteland hosting a worn path through a thicket of Buddleia. These inner city areas have a different set of reasons to attract people. Some like this serve as simple short cuts while others are able offer space enough for wider activities.

Here on Percy St., someone has placed a used TV set. The space has been in this state for many years since the club was sold, but what of the land?

2011-11-13T05:03:00.000-08:00

The more curious of locations are those that have not changed. One in particular on Church Street, in an area that has been promised regeneration is an idiosyncratic feature of the city's aesthetic. The building that was here has long been torn down to reveal a backdrop of old tiles, still in place. The trace of previous lives here leads me to step aside from this project. I realised it isn't just about economy, aesthetics and redevelopment and more to do with layers and histories.

From wastelands, an idea forked, not into an entirely original one but which felt more organic and less one dimensional.

2011-11-13T04:39:00.000-08:00

Apart from the interest in open spaces that has evolved the years, there are three main things that contribute to making it an open ended and ongoing project. Walking with a camera, taking visual field notes is one, double decker bus rides through Lancashire and Google Earth. surprising I have found the latter an enormous help. All these viewpoints let a map unfold.

Locations are vital to understanding the fabric and flow of the city and its make-up.

An example in Preston is where within a short radius or square mile, I found up to ten plots of wasteland. Some were in stages of wild nature reclamation while others were in no doubt due for redevelopment; a proud sign tied to fencing reads: 'To be...'

2011-11-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

Preston, Deepdale St, now a car park

These peripheral spaces

2011-10-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

When the North/North West of England's industries started to break down in the 1980s new questions were raised about the environment. Docklands and pits closed and other heavy industries went down adding to knock on effect and eventually creating a very changed landscape that felt worn, forgotten and broken.

The scars of that post-industrial past can still be seen. The result of neglected places, often noosed by financial uncertainty, became difficult propositions; sites with To Let signs standing for years. During the 1980s and 90s the North was plagued with the aesthetic of dereliction and abandonment. Now, many of these buildings have gone, a few have been reconstructed while some have been cleaned and transformed.

A wave of deja vu seems to swept over the old path. Regeneration and degeneration are objectives alluding to one another.

There are also new industries, new ways of seeing and document changes as well as old arguments too.

2011-06-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

Its been two years since my last posting and I'm aware as will many be that sometimes life stands in the way of such indulgent tasks as blog-keeping. Well, I'm back and going to be changing the look of this blog-mag...

Absurdity is a wonderful wry thing we have but my concerns zip back to my work I followed upon graduating as a photographer at University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) ; the wasteland project.

Beyond those first photo essays and mappings etc I managed to sift through many subject matters to finally find something I was satisfied with personally.

Wastelands have sub-consciously occupied my mind for over ten years and it is an ongoing project. A friend, fellow photographer and journalist, Antonia Charlesworth, (another former UCLAN student) has recently had BLUR magazine published as part of her MA. By featuring some of my work in there helped me to get back to it and focus on finalising some more printwork.

Although the work may seem a mile away from 'absurdities' and my previous 'walls and textural studies', to me its all fairly well linked in that they relate to marginal spaces.

MORE OF THE STRANGE

2009-05-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

In my archive I found a cut out policeman. The middle age man is found leaning blankly and not the least bit intimidating in Blackburn's shopping mall. Presumably he was there to deter any ideas that undesirables may have, let alone whether it was their intent in the first place to go and cause mischief. The idea that he stands over a number of elderly people sat on benches begs to make you wonder how he is protecting them. It's all too psychological and surreal. A cut-out-person is unsettling enough but one in uniform seems too far fetched and I think it's not just absurd but barking mad, whatever the 'ideas panel' thought at the time. Where are the real police?! I took this whilst studying a photography HND and I was amused by it all the way home to Preston.

Quirky maybe but still in the vein of juxtopositions my partner Alizon and I stumbled on someone selling combat trousers besides two religious icons; Mary and Jesus...perhaps I'm hitting too hard on the concepts of the ridiculous but it sparked something of a war and peace thing - enough for me to include it here along with another from the same day:

"Pain?"...Ok so it's a herbal stall. But...
"Ask me for a free trial."

2009-01-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

2009-01-12T06:56:00.000-08:00

2009-01-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

TV guide

2008-08-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

The image of the TV helping to mark out the boundary of a dug-out hole is curious and sings back to me the style of commentary that Richard Wentworth was observing in London. My partner Alizon pointed this out to me just around the corner from our house in Alhama de Granada, Spain (see blogspot for creative holidays). Obviously it means little to the people who arranged it but looking from the outside of the situation it seems comical and absurd.

Fleetwood and neighbouring towns

2008-05-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Of the Lancashire towns Blackpool has always been coastal king when it comes to the attraction: seaside amusements, pubs, the Pleasure Beach, tat and tack, walking on the front and of course the Tower. Morecambe seems more subdude and maloncholic although the town awaits a new influx of visitors as the fantastically re-vamped ArtDeco Midland hotel again sits proudly looking out to sea. I really like Morecambe by the way, for many reasons...while Southport, at least to me, feels more like the posher end of northern seaside culture with its outsiderness from Liverpool, the Victorian shop fronts. (All towns should have the same styled canopies to stop the battering rain).

Fleetwood on the other hand is a place that the rest of Lancashire has forgotten about. Its better fishery days long gone, its only pier closed up, a line of squat shops selling sun-bleached postcards and garish stuff for kids. As ever I'm drawn to these fringe towns and their awkward spaces. People wander about on the 'proms', couples nest in the dunes, while other couples sit in their cars and watch the sea.I like to wander and find what I think is not tacky but quirky. Its not the single object itself that leaves a visually strange treat, its the backdrop. This is why I include daft things like this toy shark: a lonely out-of-water thing, hanging on to what looks like an unravelled cage. Its amusing and absurd at the same time.

Apathy in Fleetwood. You can't make it up. The headline says it all. They have a 'tram day' in Fleetwood and well, no one can be bothered. Everyday is like Sunday indeed.

Non-place and uncertain spaces

2008-04-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

Psychogeography is a good companion to the random thinking flaneur who wanders with a camera. I've always been drawn to marginal places and spaces. Photography is an absolute passion and the timing of the shutter firing fits my own attention span on the world. The urban experience is different to me everyday. Saying that, I do have interests that are central to the city and its edges. What sometimes seems like aimless wandering is justified by this random mapping - finding material subjects that fit the projects I concentrate on, such as ruin, wasteground, non-places, textures, walls, palimpsests, odd wording, letters, objects on the ground, the list goes on. Robert Frank once said 'you can photograph anything these days'. Its true, and most people are photographers as well. But its how you collate, edit' and present work that helps a working photographer to find an interested audience.

Beyond the spaces of ruin and wastelands that often lay forgotten are the evergrowing number of new buildings, the shining glass exteriors of offices and group companies that are like mini-mirrors of beast capitals like Bejing and Tokyo, New York and London. At the city fringes, along side the dead garages and waste grounds are the non-place (a name coined by French philosopher and anthropologist Marc Auge). These new filled spaces are transitory states through which we move through - often very slowly and mechanically, for transactional and security purposes: airports, retail parks, ATM queues, the new 'malls' and peripheral supermarkets. There are dozens of other examples of non-places. A recent photograph I took shows a sample of a new 'exclusive home zone'(see Lytham below). Near to this was a 'Marketing Suite' where flags waved proudly on clipped lawns and not a soul in sight. These are the cold-edged marginal spaces within their own worlds, disconnected to ruins and places of history and identity. Months before (and left for years)this was a wasteland where people walked.

The absurd

2008-03-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

In the photographs of the artist Richard Wentworth he observes our daily eccentricities in and about the streets of London and beyond. His Making Do and Getting By study looks at ordinary things that suddenly become quirky or much more odder, now that they are turned into photographs. They are singular gestures such as propping up an old flaky window with a coffee mug or placing a polystyrene cup on a spiky railing.

Although his work has informed me about our strange ways, the type of photographs that I am taking tends to be within the region I live in Lancashire in the North West. The information I want to gather is similar in visual tones but the messages are slightly different and more to do with the ridiculous than the sublime, and more with absurdity than resourcefulness and making-do.

Sometimes the surrealism leans in too. This is an area where many photographers of the past can be aligned. Surrealism has been suggested into Eugene Atget’s photography, Andre Kertesz’s, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s and dozens of others throughout the 20th Century. It’s a deeper subject that swamps the darker recesses of reality and too sprawling for me to be a master of its text but its also personal and viewed through a camera can create some strange and mixed communications.

Weird images may be strange but does that mean the photographer is strange? For instance, the Shop Window taken in Southport is, in part, an unconscious array of gifts gathered to sell. But as an image it doesn’t really make me want to buy, apart from not being an Alsatian, Elvis or Victorian scary doll fan. It’s the combination of these things, well that and the dog’s tongue, that make it darkly comic. Ironically, it’s probably not a photograph you’d want on your wall either.

2008-03-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Photography is a strange world I love to be lost in. An ever-evolving medium in terms of technical aspects but unchanged in its status of seeing: an image of time, of life.

Eyelevel and No borders Photography

2008-03-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

Photography started a long time ago for me when the world seemed like it had started in black & white. Family photos, the NME, The Face magazine, record sleeves, world photojournalist shots and documentary features in the broadsheet magazine supplements all helped me change a gear into taking pictures, penultimately via a degree in the subject (2006).