RUSTICA, TIB STREET, 7.03AM

RUSTICA, TIB STREET, 7.03AM

The day before had started chaotically, as my alarm didn’t go off, and a non-committal drizzle had doused the weekend warmth in streets that now seemed disjointed. An old fella in a tweed flat cap, walking slowly and unsteadily with a stick, had stood in the middle of the road and loudly denounced a driver going in the wrong direction up a one way street. There’d also been a small altercation with a young lad in a white van, who decided to double the amount of time he parked in front of a building just because he knew I wanted him to move.

Today, however, a balmy temperature returned a sense of summer to the rained on tarmac and the Autumn trees remained still. I set down my camera opposite Rustica, a daytime take-away that opened long before most of the bars and restaurants now filling aspirational bellies, and waited for them to open up.

The pensioner from yesterday came by again, but this time he stopped to tell me that his name was Harry, he was 87 and he’d lived in the area for nearly forty years. He smiled as I listened to him explain that he was due to move out in a week to a bungalow a mile or so up the road.

“Anyway, what are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m photographing the changes around the area” I replied, and looked at me as if I’d told him I was actually a goat.

“Why, are they knocking things down?”

As he spoke the shutters on the cafe went up, 10 minutes late, and the first customer wandered in. It all felt so sedate, almost as if dawn had been put back half an hour.

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VICTORIA STATION, MANCHESTER 6.47AM

VICTORIA STATION, MANCHESTER 6.47AM

Two nights before there had been the Autumn Equinox, when summer ends and the days tip towards winter. The moon had shone like a torch and was perfectly round, as if it had been drawn by an eager to please schoolboy with a compass. This morning, partly covered by cloud, it had the deflated look of an old leather football that had just been clogged towards touch by an uncultured centre half.

Outside Victoria Station the new roof reminded me of a giant tomato cultivation tunnel but, within the concourse, light was spread evenly and softly, allowing the retained original features to live again. For some reason, though, the station buffet, with its dome and delicious Victorian tiles, contained chairs and tables that could have come from a closing down sale at a service station.

After taking the picture I walked up towards Shudehill and settled near the grey multi-storey car park that borders the old buildings of Thomas Street. A workman walked past, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. He stared at me for a few moments, and then said “There’s no kingfisher’s here mate. Are you trying to catch the missus and the boss?”

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CORNELL STREET, ANCOATS, 6.24AM

CORNELL STREET, ANCOATS, 6.24AM

It felt, on this early Autumn morning, that there was a boldness to the birds singing their dawn songs, and the night sky was showing early pools of blue. Clouds shrugged and melted away, leaving a definite zing in the air. Soon there was a simple, unspoilt blue above me and the day promised to be clear.

I arrived at the bottom of the terraced streets that lie behind the Express building, an Art Deco magnificence that is now begging to be occupied once again with workers. The houses on Anita Street and George Leigh Street have become somewhat famous in the city. They were built, in the late 19th Century, as model houses for the mill workers, with Anita Street being originally known as Sanitary Street. In recent years they’ve been modernised and have become worth good money.

There was still washing hanging in the back yards of some of the houses, and no doubt the TV film crews that throng the area looking for the real North would have loved that. I watched steam belch from boiler vents in the cold air. Someone had their bedroom window open. Ancoats was still and quiet. The shutter on the factory across the road was firmly closed.

It began to cloud over and, behind me, a young, hooded man carrying a holdall jumped over a fence. I wondered if he was an escaping burglar, but he was simply someone off to work who couldn’t be bothered to open the gate.

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PASSIONS, DUCIE STREET, 5.36AM

PASSIONS, DUCIE STREET, 5.36AM

This morning there was the musk scent of early Autumn. I breathed in deeply, and the air rasped the inside of my nose, causing my nostrils to flare. A softening mist embroiled the warm, enticing lights that illuminated streets as old as the professions that once lined them.

An open doorway at the side of Passions massage parlour, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, revealed stairs leading up to a first floor that appeared to be decorated like a B&Q room set. Electric blue beamed down onto the grey tarmac, providing a sense of hope, energy and life to an area that had seen better times. Outside there stood a jaded looking young man. He wore a large baseball cap slightly skewiff, and clutched a bottle of mineral water, which he necked whilst phoning for a taxi.

The lush colours shimmered in the wet surface of the roads, and the fresh sky revealed tantalising streaks of creamy light from behind a curtain of thick cloud, promising an exciting 20 minutes for me. I moved quickly up and down the street, enjoying the thrill of the moment. But then, much earlier than I’d thought, the lights popped off, instantly puncturing the mystique. In the ordinary daylight, buildings soon revealed the scars of misuse and abandonment.

A pile of rubbish lay outside the brothel, and PC World in the retail park across the way stood emptied and quiet. I was done, and all I could hear was the clanking of heavy metal being dropped to the floor in one of the last working factories in this area.

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STORE STREET, PICCADILLY 4.43AM

STORE STREET, PICCADILLY 4.43AM

When I can see that the dawn will be clear and rain free, I try to look East, where, behind Ancoats, the sky begins its daytime shift soft and golden. As this morning began there was a stillness in the area, at odds with its past and its future intentions.

Here, amongst tatty trees and unruly undergrowth, living is slowly encroaching upon working as factory units begin to quietly retreat, and flats trespass further into what was the heartland of industrial Manchester. Behind, in the distance, was Piccadilly station and the offices surrounding it, the numerous windows reflecting back the new sun at anyone making their way towards the city.

There were no trains across the bridge yet, taking people to and from Manchester. Cars came too quickly down the slope, free as children on an empty road. A man ran across a car park, as if escaping, and saw me. He stopped, put his hand to his mouth and then turned towards where he’d just come from, walking this time, and not looking back, even for a second.

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A PATCH OF GREEN, SWAN STREET 4.29AM

I wasn’t intending to get up on this morning, but I was awoken by a panic dream, in which I was photographing in Manchester, but it was unrecognisable, and the dawn was taking away the darkness too quickly for me. So, unable to rest my mind, I left my bed and made my way down towards Victoria station.

Along Swan Street two male friends were crossing towards the car park beneath the glowing glass of the new CIS building. One of them was singing “That’s Amore” to his mate so tunelessly that only the words made the song identifiable. He kept leaning in to the other man and grinning, with the expression of someone that had just discovered a bag of money.

I looked away from them, hoping that they wouldn’t be driving, and took in the new roof of Victoria Station which, in my sleepy state, appeared to resemble a giant tomato cultivation tunnel. I set down my tripod. A group of young people passed boasting of the pills that they take on a night out. Not far from me, next to the only patch of green I could see, a homeless man, clearly under the influence of drugs or drink, was sleeping standing up, like a horse. As he moaned in his unconscious state he swayed but never fell. Oddly, despite there being trees, I could hear no bird song as the sunrise filled the office windows around us.

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SALE ARTS TRAIL 2015

SALE ARTS TRAIL JULY 10/11/12th 2015

Not Quite Light will be part of this year’s Sale Arts Trail, which takes place across the weekend of 10th/11th and 12th of July 2015. The opening night on the 10th of July is open to all and entry is free.

7 pieces of work will be displayed in Coasters Cafe on Northenden Road and a larger print will be featured in the Waterside Arts Centre as part of the group exhibition.

There will also be a dawn walk through Sale with the photographer, Simon Buckley, on the morning of Sunday 12th July  ( meet at the canalside outside the Waterside at 3.15am -free) and a talk at Coasters cafe about Not Quite Light at 4pm on the same day, also free.

For more details visit the Sale Arts Trail website or email notquitelight@gmail.com

JUNE 21st, THE LONGEST DAY, 2015

JUNE 21st, THE LONGEST DAY, 2015

The Longest Day began with me dancing on a table with my flatmate’s girlfriend. He’d been out with her to some do, and they’d come in full of wine and had woken me up, demanding that I get my shoes on and go out with them. We compromised by dancing in the flat and so, when I left to photograph at just after 2.30am, my spirits were as high as a buzzard circling a freshly seeded field.

Freshbites on Oldham Street was stuffed with Mancunians seeking solace in chicken kebabs, pizzas and chips, and young girls lay slumped in bus shelters, their minds shot by shots. Outside the Tiki bar in Stevenson Square a young lad announced he thought my photographing was weird and that he wanted to smash my cameras.

I retreated away from the crowds that were lost in drink into dark streets. Blue sky was rising in the east and the last night of extending light was nearly over. From this moment on, subtle as an airborne virus, winter would begin to arrive.

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JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS, MANCHESTER 6.33AM

JERSEY STREET, ANCOATS 6.33AM

There’s a sense of growing affection for Ancoats. No longer do people scurry from doorway to cab, fearful of being mugged, or “taxed” as I recently heard a Glaswegian refer to it. Ancoats is maybe the best of Manchester’s efforts to reinvent itself. The area used to pulse with endeavour, power and anger but now, whilst it still gives sanctuary to its ghosts, it increasingly neutralises their presence.

Soon the streets around the dark brick buildings, glowing blood red in the familiar rain, will be no more threatening than a heritage park. Restaurants and cafes will open, apartments will prick the aspirational thumbs of young Mancs and the sinister spectre of industrial poverty will have been washed forever from the pavements. I like that the developers have decided to retain the old mills and warehouses. A city needs its heart kept alive and, on this wet morning, the spirit of Manchester glistened across the dark shadows.

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