When I look back at the pictures I took of Halifax in the 1960s and ’70s - the town I have always considered home - several things stand out. The town had a greyness then that went beyond an over-reliance on monochrome photography. There were still plenty of mill chimneys breaking up the skyline. Most … Continue reading Bare Beacon

When you’ve got a good subject - say, a fifteenth-century Grade I parish church - you need a good frame. What better frame for a church steeped in toil and industry than a nineteenth-century railway viaduct? My photo dates from a time when Halifax Parish Church was properly framed; now the subject remains, but the … Continue reading Framed

It’s probably been sixty years since I took this photograph of the old railway sheds beside North Bridge in Halifax, and a lot has happened since then. The sheds have gone, replaced by a leisure centre that has since disappeared as well. As for the photographer, he is still just about keeping going, although he … Continue reading Gone And Going

I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. Add a decent collection of chimney … Continue reading Rooftops And Chimney Pots

A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. I took the photograph more than half a century ago, and more than half a world away.

I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality. … Continue reading Tired And Grainy