City of Culture | >Re-PHOTO

Victoria Dock & the Old Town: We arrived in Hull for a visit during the the city’s Year of Culture on Thursday 16th February 2017, 8 years ago.

Victoria Dock & the Old Town - Hull 2017

We had come partly because I was hoping to have a show in the city – it would have been my first there since 1983 when ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ was in the Ferens Gallery. This one would have been on a rather less grand scale and fell through when the bailiffs evicted the group who had been squatting another city centre property.

But we had also come to celebrate Linda’s birthday in the city where she was born and grew up and for which we both have a particular affection, as well as to see some of the things that were happening for the special year.

And as always I had come to take photographs, in particular to revisit some of the many places around the city I had photographed back in the 1970s and 1980s. You can see many of those pictures on the Hull Photos web site where I posted a new photo every day throughout Hull’s year as City of Culture and beyond.

I wasn’t bent on a “re-photography” project. These often seem to me a rather lazy way for people who haven’t any real photographic ideas of their own to capitalise on those of other people – or even their own earlier work. Parasitical. Though I do have to admire a few projects that have been really well carried out.

For me photography has always been about my immediate response to the subject. If the scene has changed so too will I respond differently; and if it hasn’t why bother to photograph it again?

In particular I had moved over the years to seeing landscape and urban landscapes very much more in terms of panoramas. Forty or so years earlier had I worked almost entirely with tightly framed scenes using a 35mm shift lens. But now – with a few exceptions – I was working with the very different perspective of the wide sweeping view of a panorama. It forced me to think differently.

Victoria Dock, Hull’s timber dock had closed before I began making pictures there, although there were still a few small pockets of industry on and around the largely derelict site, as well as some remnants.

Now the dock has largely been filled in – the large timber ponds had already gone when I first visited. Much is now housing estates, leaving just the Outer Basin and Half Tide Basin and a slipway with water in them. And we were staying in a room of a house on one of the new estates. We arrived in early afternoon and after dumping our bags went out for a walk along the side of the Humber as the weather was fine for photography.

I had walked along this footpath years before, going on past the still open Alexandra and King George V Docks more or less to the city boundary. Now the path is cut off by the Siemens wind turbine site on the former Alexandra Dock.

We turned around and walked back towards the Old Town where a new footbridge took us across the River Hull and on to a drink and an early dinner at the Minerva. After the dramatic skies earlier the sunset was rather disappointing.

After a long rest in the pub we decided to wander around the Old Town. In 2017 the area was still pretty empty on a Thursday night in winter, cut in half by the A63, the busy road to the docks (or rather dock), a reminder that Hull is still a significant port. But the footbridge I was then very sceptical about in my account on My London Diary was eventually built. Still something of a barrier, but far less frustrating.

We walked as far as the city centre to admire (and photograph) the turbine blade on display there before turning round to walk back over the River Hull – this time we took the now seldom-lifting North Bridge.

We walked south beside the river along the deserted riverside path to Drypool Bridge where the path was then closed off after the needless demolition of Rank’s Mill for a hotel that didn’t arrive and through the streets – another long wait to cross the A63 – and back to the house we were staying in.

You can read more details of the walk and see more of the panoramas I made on My London Diary.
Victoria Dock Promenade
Night in the Old Town

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Hull City of Culture 2017. I spent a few days in Hull in February 2017, while the city was celebrating its year as UK City of Culture.

Hull was important to me in my early years as a photographer, and was also where my wife grew up, and we made our trip partly to celebrate her birthday in the city, as well as for a little promotion of my photographs from the 1970s and 80s and also to work on a new photographic project.

I had my first – and still my largest – one person show in Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery in 1983, and much later self-published a book, Still Occupied: A View of Hull 1977-85. It’s still available, but at a silly price – and for some reason the hardcover imagewrap version is now cheaper than the paperback version. I’d always suggest getting the PDF version at £4.50, as the images are at just a tad better quality than in print and good enough to make a print should you wish (and I’ll pardon any small breaches of copyright.) The book has around 270 black and white photographs, some reproduced rather small, on its 120 pages. First published in 2011 it was republished with minor corrections to captions for the 2017 Hull UK City of Culture.

Two rather more reasonably priced 36 page black and white booklets were later published by Cafe Royal Books, one on the River Hull, and the second, The Streets of Hull. I promised another on the docks but have not yet got around to it.

I also set up a new web site on Hull for its year as City of Culture, finding much to my surprise that the domain hullphotos.co.uk was still available. I began this with a couple of hundred pictures at the end of 2016 and then added one every day through the whole of 2017. There are now over 600 black and white images on the site. A search of my images on Flickr reveals rather more than twice as many, including a large number in colour.

I had some disappointments during the 5 days I was in Hull in February 2017, and I found many other photographers and others in Hull who were also upset at the lack of opportunities the year had provided for local artists, instead concentrating on buying in talent from elsewhere. There is no shortage of talent in Hull and it would have been good for more of it to be showcased during the year. Plans for a small exhibition of my own work unfortunately fell through.

Self-portrait by gas light in Nellie’s in Beverley

But it was a good 5 days, with plenty to do and to seem and I was pleased with some of the panoramas I was able to make, though I’ve not yet got around to creating a show of these together with my old black and whites from the same locations. We also enjoyed a family celebration of Linda’s birthday,

The pictures in this post were all taken on Sunday 19th February 2017, where I got up fairly early for a long walk in the area close to the River Hull before meeting family for lunch, then took a bus to Beverley, where we walked around the town before having a drink in Nellie’s, one of the country’s more remarkable pubs and then catching the bus back to Hull, and then walking back through an empty city to the house we were staying in on the Victoria Dock estate.

Here’s the full list of links to our five days in Hull:
Hull 2017 City of Culture
    Sculcoates & River Hull
    City Centre & Beverley Rd
    Ropery St & St Mark’s Square
    St Andrew’s Dock
    Hessle Rd
    Gipsyville
    Beverley and Nellie’s
    Around the Town
    The Deep
    More Hull Panoramic
    Wincolmlee and Lime St
    Evening in the City
    Old Town
    A ride on Scale Lane Bridge
    Around the City Centre
    Hullywood Opening
    East Hull & Garden Village
    Albert Dock
    Old Town & City Centre
    River Hull
    Night in the Old Town
    Victoria Dock Promenade

Tag: City of Culture

Victoria Dock & the Old Town – Hull 2017

Hull City of Culture 2017