Continuing the unintended theme, we move from back street to back yard. I'm almost certain this particular back yard was in Sheffield, but I can't remember whose it was! No conceptual artist could have put together a collection of bins, fences and drainpipes with greater skill.
Category: Scanned Negatives
The Swinging Sixties – On Godley Bridge
Most people of my generation can look back to the swinging sixties with memories of rock and roll plus or minus the usual accompaniments. It appears, however, that I spent the decade standing on top of Godley Bridge taking photographs of an ever-changing Halifax. Here's yet another from 1966.
Colouring My Life
Kelvin Flats, Sheffield 1984 : Having just scanned this negative of mine from way back when I have this strange urge to get some coloured pencils and start colouring in the different shapes and patterns. I need some colour in my life.
Headscarves And Unwashed Spuds
I took this photo 50+ years ago. I never printed it, it somehow didn’t seem worth the paper. From a technical point of view, it hasn’t improved with time, but it has become more resonant. It speaks of the past - of headscarves and unwashed spuds.
Halfway To Paradise
You’ve got to have a certain sense of humour to name a street “Paradise Street”. You might just get away with it with a row of mansions overlooking a sun-drenched beach in the Caribbean: but not a back street in Halifax. But who knows, a house to live in and a cobbled street to park … Continue reading Halfway To Paradise
The Wandering Lion Of Stoke
I must have taken this photograph fifty-odd years ago when I was living near Stoke-on-Trent. Even then I couldn’t resist passing a pub without taking a photograph, just in case it wasn't there the next time. In the case of the Red Lion, Stoke, it wasn’t. It had been demolished brick by brick, only to … Continue reading The Wandering Lion Of Stoke
Way Back When
This was taken way back when - when industry still clung to the hillsides of Halifax, when machine tools, along with carpets and toffees provided employment for the town, when the hillsides were treeless, and when washing was optimistically hung out to dry in the smokey breeze.
The Steps To The Station
Steps To The Station, 1982 : The last scan from this strip of negatives of Halifax from 40 years ago. The steps still exist but the lamp-post and the top wall have gone - and what remains isn't quite as soot-black as it was back then. Steps in the right direction, perhaps.
The Line-Out, Halifax 1982
I assume that this is the railway line out of Halifax heading towards the tunnel under Beacon Hill although I can't quite work out where I took it from. Could that possibly be where Discovery Road is now? 40 years on, I suspect the scene will be very different now.
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