We hear a lot these days about the changing nature of town and city centres, but the centre of gravity of our conurbations has never been static. I took this photograph over fifty years ago from the waste land at the bottom of Woolshops in Halifax. Widespread demolition had already swept through the narrow streets, … Continue reading Home 10 : The Abattoir And Cart
Category: Scanned Negatives
Away 2 : Boating Under The Pier
Boating under the pier is prohibited. So is swimming in the birdbath, cycling down the drainpipe, and painting your toenails in the coal cellar. But, when liberty returns to the world, we will be able to board cruise ships for trips under the great piers of Britain.
Away 1 : Fish And Chips On The Front
AWAY 1 : There used to be home and away. Home was where you lived fifty-one weeks of the year. Away was your week at the seaside. This, however, was quite a late shot: the give away is that the fish and chips are in polystyrene boxes. By the 1980s, away was more likely to … Continue reading Away 1 : Fish And Chips On The Front
Pain And Suffering In Downtown Halifax Part II
This was one of the first posts I ever put up on my blog, I posted it fifteen years ago in 2006. It came to mind because .... this morning started with a visit to the dentist! Actually, in the intervening fifteen years the dentist has moved, even closer to the town centre. Whist waiting … Continue reading Pain And Suffering In Downtown Halifax Part II
Reclining Figure, Halifax 1970
One of the least known of Henry Moore's monumental sculptures is his 1970 Reclining Figure which has been on permanent display in Halifax for the last fifty years. In order to overcome the civic antipathy to major arts projects, Moore cleverly disguised the sculpture as an overpass.
Limited Intelligence
One can't avoid being impressed by how well Artificial Intelligence (AI) copes with the automated colourisation of old black and white photographs. Take, for example, this photograph of a back street in Burslem, North Staffordshire, which I took in the early 1970s when I was living in that part of the world. The negative was … Continue reading Limited Intelligence
Memories Within Cardboard Confines
Is it just age that makes you far more susceptible to time travel? Sometimes it can be a word like advocaat, sometimes a pattern like the geometric madness of 1960s wallpapers; most times it is an image. These two photographs were taken at a Christmas Party at my parent's house, sometime around 1965. They are … Continue reading Memories Within Cardboard Confines
Soot And Chrome
A photograph of mine of Halifax in the early 1960s. The Town Hall was still soot-encrusted, the cars parked outside the White Swan Hotel had an over-abundance of chrome, and Pohlmann's still sold pianos.
Kites To Rotherham
Sheffield is built on hills and therefore back yards are often more like back cliff faces. This was the back yard of the house we lived in forty years ago: big enough for a dustbin and a pushbike. Washing hung like kites, getting ready to launch once a decent breeze got up, destined for the … Continue reading Kites To Rotherham
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