Square Mile

‘This is Not a Photograph of a Policeman’ Saturday 19th September 2020, four days prior to the introduction of stricter restrictions of the gathering of people and opening hours of hospital venues during the resurgence of Covid-19 infections. How do people react when presented with information outside of their everyday routine? Do they stop and examine, turn away and ignore, carry on unaware or destroy it? At 10am Manchester interacted with a cardboard policeman carrying a bundle of deflated latex gloves and a message of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. At 11.15am it was removed by Arndale Security assisted by a homeless man. I don’t know whether I should be annoyed by its short life or worried it lasted so long.

Throughout Salford there are symbols of movement and freedom, opportunity and potential yet the city is plagued by it's leading levels of poverty, unemployment and in-education. The only places with true accessibility are the sites of gambling, homelessness and control.

The national lockdowns in2020 lead to the weekly Clap for the NHS. A tribal act intended to unite and elevate the risk and struggle of front-line workers, with the goal of influencing the general population to follow the restrictions. Instead we saw a symbol followed for fear of public ostracisation and the true individual action of littering and abandoning the guidelines.

A series of images shot on the first Saturday night of the 2020 lockdown. Each scene is from the Northern Quarter and surrounding areas in Manchester at approximately 9pm.

Street photography has been around since the inception of photography as a medium. It's a genre of work that I enjoy both researching and creating as it presents us with a vision of everyday life otherwise unseen and unknown. whenever I'm not working on a commission or project I like to soak up the atmosphere of my home city Manchester looking for the sights and scenes which epitomise what it means to be Mancunian.

By no means the first, but possibly the most documented, enslaved man in the Lancashire and Greater Manchester area Juba Royton is notable for his few but unique appearances in local and national records. These dates are merely records of occasions in his life, no images of him, no history before his arrival in Oldham and no indication to the type of man he was beyond what the records infer.

'Home is Where The Heart is' was a project I completed with the support of Coffee4Craig, a Manchester based homeless charity. This project was intended as a question of the representation of those who are in a position to call themselves homeless after personal circumstances have lead to them requiring help to find shelter, food, clothing and other sources of medical or personal support. As apposed to the architypal image of individuals in these circumstances the project was to connect the subjects with an audience in a way which created a sense of uniqueness, individuality and equality. Each story and person has their own specific needs and their own story to tell in how they became homeless and ultimately progressed on to anew chapter in their life.

The experience of a shower but in imagery, view this whilst playing rain sounds and the image becomes visual texture.