Albert Dock, 2015
Sitting 200 miles away my thoughts this morning are on Hull at the start of its year in at least something of a spotlight as the UK 2017 City of Culture.
Hull is for me a place of many fond memories and admiration for the city and its people. My first visit, coming to the city across the country from Manchester was full of trepidation at the prospect of meeting my future in-laws, but it was a place where I soon felt at home. Hull was not quite another country, although the long straight stretch of track from Selby seemed long enough to take us to one, but it did then seem a kind of time travel, back to the country of my childhood. As I wrote a few years later, I left Manchester in 1965 and the train drew in to Hull Paragon in 1955.
The station name embodies some of my feelings, which were not meant negatively. Hull was in many ways still living in a past age, but one where many of the positive values that were being lost elsewhere were being preserved. It was a working class city where some of the vices of class snobbery and greed were far less rampant.
Ferens Art Gallery, City Hall and Queen Victoria, 2014
It was almost 10 years after that first visit, for various reasons – including poverty – before I began to photograph the city. By then, much had changed, both in my personal life and to the city, devastated by Iceland and the cod wars, by containerisation in the docks, and, a little later with the boot cruelly turned by Thatcher.
The Tidal Barrier, sculpture and The Deep at the mouth of the Hull, 2008
It got little thought and little help from successive UK governments – though Barbara Castle had earlier given them the Humber Bridge, largely redundant by the time it opened in 1981 – but has benefited in a large way from European funding (perhaps some compensation for the pounding the city took from the Lutwaffe, largely unreported during the war when Hull was seldom if ever named in the news other than as ‘a north-east city’), which makes the prospect of Brexit challenging.
A war memorial to civilians killed in the bombing, 2016
Hull continued to impress me in some ways and depress me in others, and both aspects were I think reflected in my project ‘Still Occupied’, exhibited in Hull in 1983, and in my later photography of the city, though my visits are now much shorter and less frequent. The warmth of the people, and a true Yorkshire rugged individuality; the city too seems to have rediscovered some of the heritage which in the 70s its council seemed reluctant, even embarrased, to acknowledge.
Memorials for fishermen lost at sea in Hull’s splendid parish church – for some reason never granted cathedral status, 2014. Could the Chuch of England be snobbish:-)
Hull was always a working class city, and its cultural life, far more open than that of larger and more class-stratified cities remains and have been refreshed. It remained a city where the people made their own culture, in living rooms, cultural organisations and societies, pubs and clubs, as well as welcoming visiting artists at its theatre and municipal hall, while elsewhere so many more simply slumped in front of the TV. The strength of its year as city of culture will be far more in its home-grown events rather than the more prestigious performances by celebrated artists that will make the headlines – and bring in cultural tourists.
Footbridge over River Hull, 2014
Hull is worth a visit any year, to walk along by the River Hull and visit the Old Town, in part cruelly isolated from the rest of the city by Castle Street, the dual carriageway A63 which seemed designed to cut off the modern city from some of its past. Worth visiting for its fine free museums, and the art gallery, reopening after a long refurbishment. On my last few visits the city has been in turmoil with pavements dug up and various alterations. I do hope it isn’t too much cleaned up, too sanitised; along with the dirt it would be too easy to lose too much of its character. Like most things, it’s best seen warts and all.
River Hull, 1977
I’ve shared my own small contribution to the year celebrating Hull before on this blog, my new web site Hull Photos, hullphotos.co.uk. Shortly after I finish writing this post I’ll put up today’s picture to mark the official opening of the site and the start of the year of culture – with at least one more picture to come for every day of the year the Hull enjoys as UK City of Culture. But Hull is a city of culture every year.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
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