Layers of Time

Traces of a post-industrial city scapes - the often ignored marginal spaces where textures and layers can be found, clues to old narratives. When I first picked up a camera in the early 1980s I wandered without any knowledge of history or photography...I just liked uncertain old buildings, flaking paint and wandering.

I still do like those things but now I have a sudden archive. Forty odd years later I'm editing, filing and sifting through old negatives and photos of buildings are cropping up that are no longer there. 

I took a photo (around 2001) of 'three high rise' flats from a moving train but for years I hadn't a clue where I'd taken it. As I was studying in Blackburn at the time I joined a Blackburn Past & Present Facebook page. I queried the image and lots of people replied straight away. It turned out to be 'Mill Hill' flats, with a chimney to the side...I'd taken the photo a few months before they were demolished but it took me twenty odd years to find that out.

I use a lot of b/w 35mm/120 roll film to create layered images now - I like the idea of repurposing an image for a different aesthetic - like adding a texture and giving it another perspective.