30 Years Ago ...

I was driven up the M1 by my parents, in a car full with my worldy possessions, destination Leeds.  My life was about to profoundly change, the apron strings would finally break and I would be left on my own in a strange city sharing a flat with 4 people I was yet to meet.  I can still remember the good byes, the sense of utter loss and bewilderment as I sat on my new bed staring out at a bleak landscape of terraced houses and industrial estates.  An hour or two later my next door neighbour arrived, announced that the pub had opened and life as a University student began.

Apart from the obvious parallels of once again getting down to degree level learning in Leeds, the weekend seminar was a chance to walk down the streets that had been my home for 3 years.  It was an interesting experience, a blend of sadness for a youth long past mixed with surprise at how much and how little things had changed.  The flat I spent that first hour in has gone, recently demolished for a new development.  It is still there on Google maps, an echo of a past that was part of me.

The pub was just around the corner from the flats, you can see them in the background.  we never went because they served fizzy beer and we did not drink fizzy beer - well actually I drank lager, but my mates... it's a long story.

Here I find a clear parallel with the presentation of Mishka Henner's work, I can no longer visit this place, even if I tried, for me it only exists as imagery in Google Maps and even there it will  gradually fade away as newer satellite passes pick up the replacement buildings.  Google maps seems so real, so authetic, miraculous and yet it is only a very large photograph of something that once was and may no longer be.

Away from the shock of finding my first independent home a hole in the ground, I was able to find many places familiar to me and recorded them with my camera, something the 18-21 year old never thought to do, idiot boy.  But, to set the scene this is me, then - the photo taken at the start of my second year (I lost my first student union card) when I was 19

and this is the Physics graduating class of 1985, I am 4 from the right in the front row, wearing the tan leather jacket - oh boy how I have changed, but thank god I lost the mullet, what was I thinking - I blame the 1980's.

Last weekend this scene was rather different, no students, just me and my camera.  It is a few weeks until the start of term so it is understandably deserted and yet this further deepened a strange sense of absence in a place I felt I should belong to.

I amused myself for a while taking some images in the brutal concrete architecture that made up the area just in front of the main lecture theatres

 The Physics and Computer Science Building

 The steps leading down from the older part of the University

 This is about as close as I ever got to the library, I was a lazy git as a student

 The lecture theaters seen from the Maths department

Whilst photographs are powerful documents, they still only carry a faint imprint of all that makes up a place.  The corridor above leads to the physics department and is a space I am so familiar with and yet it was not seeing it that brought me back, it was the smell of the rubber floor tiles, 30 years later no different than it was back then.

Turning to the left in the corridor above this is the view out onto the main campus and the red brick that places Leeds within the typography of Universities

The student union had not changed much, at least not externally, other than the removal of the road and replacement with a pedestrianized zone.  Good move, I fell out of that place a few times.

Just inside the doors and to the left is a small concert/theater venue, where I saw Mud and Steve Hackett during freshers week.  The rest of the Union though was utterly changed, the grimy smokey, sticky place I remember was gone replaced by bright shiny spaces with supermarkets, banks, a bar that actually looked fun to be in.  That really was the biggest shock of the day.

Turning away from the University I passed a few spots that were regulars parts of my life.  The Morissons we used to shop is was as grim as it was back then

 The beautiful old BBC building had sprouted an ugly friend

 The first bank I ever used a cash point at was still thriving

Now the horror, this used to be one of the best fish and chip shops in the North, a place where the frying fat came in blocks and even a bag of chips was strictly not for vegetarians or Hindus.

It was just across the road from the Pack Horse, opposite the engineering departments.

And just a few doors down from the Ale Shop.  What a combination, a few beers in the pub, brilliant fish and chips and an off-license that sold real ale in whatever quantity needed.

 Even the house I rented with 6 friends in my 2nd and 3rd years had changed, although that came as no surprise, this was a case of repair or demolish.  It is now a nicely appointed private house with double glazing, a badly needed improvement, that place was cold in the winter

This was my room in the basement (we never used the door).  The house was on a steep slope, hence the basement being on level ground at the back.

Recently I have looked at myself as a subject as well as a photographer.  This introspection has not been easy, but has helped me rationalize my current working situation and start to mend a dysfunctional lifestyle.  Going to Leeds offered another chance for photographic self analysis, but an exploration of past, a study of where I come from.  I have not dug all that deep, this is quite superficial, but still very important to me as an individual.  Perhaps with more time and a stronger will I could have made more of it.

Leeds had a profound affect on my life, it was the bridge between home and the world of work.  These are deeply personal images, of no interest to anyone but myself.  This speaks of the subjectivity of photography, what I as the photographer see in these images is the passage of time and a sense of history.  A few other people might have a similar reaction, but to most they are simply pictures, perhaps worth a passing glance but carrying no special narrative.  These pixels store my past, but only my past!