Ann Hillman was the lynchpin of the campaign against the clearance of two streets in central Barrow-in-Furness (Cumbria) but she finally moved from her lifelong home just days before Christmas 2009.
Here she describes how her community lost heart as the council planned its demolition. No firm plans are in place for the streets being bulldozed.
** All my work on regeneration, dating back to 2006, is now available at my Street Fighters project website **
“…then there were those kids, who for reasons unknown to any of us, decided to totally own the event. They would help sort images, put them up, gaurd them, and even they took time to explore the visuals themselves. The audience ranged from curious people walking past, to bloggers, photo enthusiasts, designers or couples looking to do something fun on the weekend.
“In a true Indian spirit, the work cannot be left untouched by the imperfections in the world. So there were nails piercing the prints, and dirty finger prints giving new interpretations to the images themselves. The way images react to the surrounding crumbling walls or the leaves gave them new meaning. And often a perfect home…” Puneet Rakheja
I’ve been dying to hear how Blow-Up – the Blindboys street photography exhibition in Mumbai – went at the weekend and have finally found some write-ups and a few photos of how it looked. Thanks to Tenzin Dakpa for the image above of my own contribution. Reviews of how it went can be found here and here. Cheers guys!
My young carers portraits are running on the BBC North Yorkshire website, in conjunction with a radio piece planned for tomorrow in which one of the group will talk about their film project.
My multimedia piece can be seen here.
I’ve spent yesterday recording some of my dad’s memories about his family and his childhood in India, where his family lived for about five generations prior to the 1950s. It was quite interesting to then take a look through my grandmother’s photo albums from the 1930s. I never really met my grandparents but i have spent time in and around Kolkata, where these pictures were taken. So much unfamiliarity and yet it all feels very familiar.
my photos so far to the service users at the Booth Centre tomorrow.
Fingers crossed they’ll like them….
Excitingly, I have work in a couple of most excellent events this weekend. Disappointingly, I won’t be present at either one….
First off tomorrow (Fri) evening, one (or possibly two) of my pieces are among around 25 slideshows being shown in Life.Still, part of the Bristol Festival of Photography. I know Young Carers Revolution is on the schedule and there’s a chance Zen and the art of Sandcastles could turn up as well. I’m not 100% sure. If you’re based in Bristol please go and have a beer for me….more info at the link above.
Secondly, a set of my Appleby Horse Fair images are being shown at Blow-Up Bombay, a street-art photography exhibition organised by the fantastic blindboys crew on Saturday. Over the past six months, blindboys has organised blow-ups in Bangalore, Paris and Delhi, displaying works from over 25 photographers and 2,500 pictures. On Saturday they take on India’s economic powerhouse Mumbai. I LOVE the idea of this – taking a really diverse group of photographers’ work to the streets and putting it in front of people who wouldn’t normally see it. I just wish I could be there……
As The Times of India puts it:
….In this Bollywood backyard, strewn with papier mâché Greco-Roman pillars and other discarded props that once featured in celluloid dreams, two photographers will set foot on Saturday, armed with cellotape and photographs printed on cheap paper. Together, they will embellish the tattered walls with not just their own works but also those of both established and amateur photographers received over the past few months. Works which, just like the roofless house, are constantly threatened by the oblivion of abandonment.
….The second Blow Up in Delhi’s busiest centre, Connaught Place, which saw about 50,000 visitors in a day and over 30 photographers, also surprised the duo with varied feedback. Cops stared and went their way, a passerby told Mahajan that his work on the melancholic youth of Kashmir reminded him of his own strifefilled days in Jharkhand, beggars tore off some pictures and used them as wallpaper and a paani puri wallah played art guide to some curious onlookers. “It’s this kind of direct connect with art and public space that we are looking to achieve,’’ says Mahajan, adding that most of the pictures disappear on their own by the third or fourth day.
“The end result seems to be that the people that deal with the problems are then portrayed as the problem” – Gary Loftus
I first met Gary Loftus and Jonathan Cross in spring 2007 and stayed in close touch with them over a period of about six months, until they were ready to go public with a huge list of complaints they had about the new property they had bought off plan in Beswick, part of the New East Manchester Housing Market Renewal area. We got their story into a number of publications, including this feature in Inside Housing. The result was that the developer offered to buy back their property – an offer they refused – although three years later a number of issues persist.
Gary and Jonathan are exactly the kind of people regeneration schemes like New East Manchester are meant to be about….bright professionals who have lived in East Manchester their whole lives and who bought into the vision of lovely, modern mixed tenure communities. The reality, as Gary explains in the clip above, hasn’t been quite so rosy.
Quoting from my orginal piece:
“We’ve had in excess of 300 faults. We’ve had two en-suite showers, two kitchens, six front doors and three lawns.
“All the rear windows had to be replaced, we’ve had problems with our patio doors and tiles replaced…”
He takes a deep breath and carries on: “All the properties were fitted with Whispergens – a combined heat and power system which keeps breaking down. We’re meant to be having them replaced, but they’ve been taken off the market.
“On top of this, the builders have breached their planning consent. Our house ended up around 60 sq ft bigger than it should have been, and we’ve been advised by the council’s planning department that a retrospective application is now needed.”
…….Cross is not a one-off. I met residents of more than 10 neighbouring properties, and all told a similar story.
“We’ve faced fault after fault,” says Alan Jones, who chose the development for its proximity to his beloved Manchester City FC.
“Twelve windows had to be replaced because they were scratched. Ceilings have been replastered because it was all falling off. The kitchen was put in wrong.
“Lead blew off the roof in the high winds and smashed our shed. The render was cracked and three internal doors have been replaced. Electric wires had not been screwed in properly. The list goes on.”
** All my work on regeneration, dating back to 2006, is now available at my Street Fighters project website **
I’m not sure why I only just thought of doing this but I’ve created a stand-alone website to consolidate all my work on regeneration. I had no idea quite how much of it there was until it came to putting it all together. I’ll continue to post new work on this blog of course as well as popping it onto my Street Fighters site but this is an opportunity to get a lot of stuff not previously available online ‘out there’ in case anyone finds it useful. It will probably bore most people to tears, mind. Imagine how I feel.
I’m borrowing a medium format camera and light meter from a friend for a few weeks and last week shot two rolls of film through it. I developed the black and white at home and just got back the colour. I’m not experienced at using film and this camera is completely manual. I think I need lots of practice both focusing it and getting the exposure right. I have a real thing for colour medium format portraits though and hope to get using it at the Booth Centre before I have to give it back. I fear I’m going to be hankering after a piece of kit like this once it goes home.
