I took this photo in Halifax over 50 years ago. Then it was soot, steam and slubbing: grey mills against a grey background. Now it's all serviced offices and digital capabilities - not a dyed mixed fibre in sight.
Category: Home
It’s Halifax
I must have taken the original photograph about thirty years ago, although this version of it dates from last night. It's a familiar scene: a mixture of concrete and stone, cast iron and barbed wire, chapels and mill chimneys, It's Halifax.
O.D.E.O.N.
You can say what you like about the building: some say ugly, some say daring, Pevsner said "jumbled"! Now it is just a sad and boarded-up shell. But for me it will always be six-penny choc ices and the Saturday morning Cinema Club. 2, 4, 6, 8; who do we appreciate? O.D.E.O.N.
Faith Demolished
Another of my photographs of Rhodes Street, Halifax, taken - I think - in the early 1970s. The call for faith on the church notice board was clearly short-lived: the church was demolished shortly after the photograph was taken.
Home
I'm home again. All that travelling is very nice: good for the soul and good for the spirit, but it isn't home. It isn't Yorkshire stone, Yorkshire mills and Yorkshire monuments. It isn't rain-rich trees and smoke-grained walls and folk that share a heritage. It isn't Halifax.
Halifax Town Hall
There is, of course, nothing "natural" about black and white photographs - they are about as fake as a Trumpian truth. They do however - B&W photos, not Trump - allow you to concentrate on shapes and lines and not get distracted by the extravagance of colour. Thus, the splendid Halifax Town Hall from Broadway … Continue reading Halifax Town Hall
Trees
A photo of mine from the late 1960s, taken from Godley Branch Road looking down on Halifax. I suspect I incorporated the tree because such things were so rare up Beacon Hill in those days. You wouldn't be able to take a similar shot today - you can't see the town for the trees!
Technicolor Grey
I remember the sixties and seventies in monochrome. When I occasionally come across one of my colour photographs from those days, it somehow seems all wrong, like a Technicolor film on a bad day. Whilst the streets were grey and the skies were grey, the fish and chips - hot from the fryer -radiated colour.
MINING FOR COAL AND A WARM BATH
I came across an illustration the other day of two children being hauled up a mineshaft. After a little research I discovered that not only was the illustration a “real” record of two actual named children, but even more surprisingly, it was based on the practices at a coal mine just a few miles away … Continue reading MINING FOR COAL AND A WARM BATH
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