The photograph is from more than forty years ago and shows the steps leading up to Fitzalan Square in Sheffield from Bakers Hill. In the early 1980s, I commuted by bus and train between Sheffield, where I lived, and Doncaster, where I worked. Many a night, I would race up those steps in a mad … Continue reading Breathless In Sheffield

Another of my Sheffield photos from the early 1980s. When using black-and-white film, cut out the grey middleman and concentrate on shapes and outlines - a fancy way of saying I didn’t get the exposure right!

I took this photograph in Sheffield more than forty years ago. After all this time, I’m not certain where it was taken - possibly around Kelham Island. The exact location does not matter; it is the starkness of the scene that grips the imagination, accentuated by the photograph’s black-and-white composition. The shapes possess a beauty … Continue reading Industrial Cubism

At the start of a new month, I once again dive into my file of photographs taken over the last sixty or more years. Photographs make time stand still, and I see these pictures as little flakes of history. This particular flake dates back to around 1980 and was taken somewhere in Sheffield - please … Continue reading Rooftops

Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. I eventually narrowed it down to a building on Westfield Terrace in Sheffield, which has had a colourful history: … Continue reading The Uses Of Zion

I've always worked on the principle that, if you're walking past a pub, you should take a picture of it and then pop in for a pint - in case it isn't there the next time you pass. I clearly adhered to this principle in the early 1980s when I passed the Earl of Arundel … Continue reading Earl Of Buffs

I took this photograph from the front door of the Sheffield house we were living in back in the early 1980s. The tall building is the splendid 20th-century University Arts Tower; the building next to it is the equally splendid 19th-century St George’s Hospital. The snow on the ground was pre-global warming, and the grey … Continue reading Sheffield Arts

This photograph dates back to my Sheffield days in the 1980s - days of grey and white and miners’ strikes. I’d probably just got off the bus, and as I skated down the ice-covered streets, I stopped to record the scene.