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 for some time. Problems arise from time scales. The next stage tends to be the 'liminal stage' where it feels neither owned nor remembered. Other activity can happen. People pass through, walk their dog, motorbikes get dumped, kids play. It becomes an 'other' space.

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

'Friendship' Social Club, Percy Street

This space was once a social club. This photo was taken on Fujifinepix around 2004.

They tore the building down and it's been a wasteland since (2020). There's a worn path that runs through. These inner city spaces have a different reasons to attract different kinds of people. The spaces can serve as simple short cuts while for others it can be a place to hide things or with less emphasis on discretionary acts, leaving huge TV sets.

The space has been in this state for many years since the club was sold, but what of the land?

Deepdale St, now a car park

A view through the fencing on Deepdale St. Deepdale football ground is just visible.

These peripheral spaces

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. Many buildings have now gone, a few have been reconstructed while some have been cleaned and transformed.

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

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."

TV guide

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. Obviously it means little to the people who arranged it but looking from the outside of the situation it seems comical and absurd.