In 1994 I set out to photograph carnival both in black and white and in colour, and while my colour images concentrate on the people in the procession and their costumes, it was a little more varied than in previous years, with more overlap with the black and white work.
So I took some pictures of the people watching the carnival in colour and perhaps rather more than in previous years where the carnival was the background rather than the main subject.
I was working with colour negative film, and exposures were a little more critical than with black and white, which has greater latitude. There are some I could not get good prints from in the darkroom, and although digitising makes it a little easier there are still some where the colour is not as good as I would like.
But despite these problems I was encouraged by the results , and the following year for various reasons photographed Notting Hill almost entirely in colour.
There are around 60 colour pictures from 1994 beginning some way down page 6 of my Notting Hill in the 90s album and continuing onto the next page. Clicking on any of the pictures above will also take you to larger versions in this album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Although almost all the pictures I took at Notting Hill Carnival in 1993 were in black and white, I did make a few colour images, and here are a small selection.
Almost all of them were of the procession, and I think taken in a fairly short period of time, mainly on Ladbroke Grove.
I tried to cut my equipment to a minimum for carnival, partly to make it easier to move through the crowds, but also because I was just a little worried about taking what looked like camera bags full of expensive equipment to the event. And I wanted to be able to dance as I took pictures.
Instead of a normal camera bag, I took a small khaki canvas ex-army shoulder bag which I still use today when I want to travel light, issued in 1942 possibly for a gas mask, large enough to take a camera, one or two spare lenses, a decent supply of film, notebook, water bottle and a few oddments, which back in those days would usually include a Mars Bar for when my energy lagged, and sometimes a sandwich or two.
Probably when I saw some particularly attractive and colourful costumes and had finished a black and white film I picked a colour one to reload the camera – probably my Minolta CLE, a rather superior second version of the Leica CL which for some obscure reason Leitz decided not to put their name on, ending their collaboration with Minolta. I then took pictures quickly to finish the film so I could get back to my real work using black and white. I think that happened a couple of times on Children’s Day, but on the Monday I concentrated on more serious black and white work.
In crowds I always made sure to put the shoulder strap over my head and on one shoulder and hold the bag on my stomach so as not to get caught up behind me. I always kept the camera on a strap around my neck too. But generally the crowds were good-natured and in high spirits and I had no trouble taking pictures.
Just once, in the centre of a heaving crowd of dancers in front of a sound system I suddenly realised that someone had put their hand into my left trouser pocket. I grabbed it and held it there protesting, and slowly pulled it out to reveal it holding a wallet. But it wasn’t mine (I’d left that at home) and of course it had no money in it. I’m not sure why he was planting it on me, but pushed it back into the hand I was still firmly holding and told the guy to eff off and he ran off pushing through the crowd. It didn’t seem the place to investigate further.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
A few more colour pictures from Notting Hill Carnival in 1990 – there are more on page 5 of the Flickr album.
This was the first year I went to Carnival, and set a pattern I followed in most years, taking the train from Hammersmith to Westbourne Park station, arriving around the middle of the day, before things really got going then walking along to All Saints Rd and photographing around there and Talbot Rd and the surrounding streets.
Later I’d walk up Portobello Rd and under the Westway and take pictures in the north of the area where the streets were less busy and I could still move around. I found the procession route in the south of the area very crowded and impossible for my kind of photography.
I think all these colour pictures were taken on the Sunday – Children’s Day, and that on Monday I worked only in black and white. Most of the pictures I made of the actual procession were on Ladbroke Grove.
If you want to look at more, and at those from later years you can go to page 5 of Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s. Clicking on any of the pictures above will also take you to a larger version in this Flickr album.
Though I think my best pictures of Notting Hill Carnival were in black and white, most years until I moved to using digital cameras I photographed there in both black and white and colour. By 1990, when I first photographed Carnival, for colour I was exclusively using colour negative film.
I could process colour negative film myself, and by this time much of my black and white work was taken using Ilford’s chromogenic films, at first XP1 which had been introduced in 1980, then XP2 which replaced it in Spring 1991, which was designed to be processed in the standard C41 chemicals used for colour neg, though Ilford still produced its own specific processing kit just for the black and white versions.
While it was simple to contact print black and white negatives, producing these in colour from colour negatives was rather more difficult, and it was only after I’d squeezed a colour paper processing line into my diminutive darkroom in the mid 1990s that I began to do so. Even then, getting reasonably correct colour was a problem.
Before that time, I sent away my colour films for trade processing, and being a little short of cash mostly that meant using cheap non-professional processing labs, paying for processing and printing as 4″x6″ enprints. The film processing was fine, but the printing varied from good to a rainbow range of colour casts and variable contrast. Eventually I found a cheap postal amateur service that was reasonably consistent and still cost only around a third of my local pro lab.
Now I’ve digitised most of the colour negatives from the 1990 Notting Hill Carnival, and have found them rather more interesting than I expected. Having them in digital form makes it easier to work on the pictures as I could when making black and white prints, with some dodging and burning where needed.
There are a few pictures in this post, and I’ll put at least one more set from 1990 on here in another post, but if you want to look at more, and at those from later years you can go to page 5 of Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s. Clicking on any of the pictures above will also take you to a larger version in this Flickr album.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Notting Hill was in colour for me in 1995. Although I’d taken a few colour pictures in earlier years, this was the first year I decided to work entirely in colour – except for a few frames finishing a black and white film in one of my cameras.
I’ve never really gone back to look at the colour pictures I took in earlier years – something now on my ‘to do list’, as the black and white interested me rather more. But I think I had been encouraged to cover the event in colour by one of my potential clients – not an actual commission, but a suggestion that they might be more interested in colour, and I’d thought it would be interesting to try and see if I could do the kind of things I’d already done in black and white.
It wasn’t of course the first time I’d worked in colour. I’d taken colour pictures for as long as I’d been involved in photography, alongside black and white, but generally of rather different subjects. I’d switched from using colour transparency to colour negative film ten years before I took these pictures, but still hadn’t really worked out a good system for dealing with the work. At first I’d had everything trade processed and getting enprints. It’s a good system for the occasional film such as holiday snaps, but when you get thousands of them it becomes a little difficult to organise.
By 1985 I was developing my own colour films – along with the mainly chromogenic black and white films I was also using which could be developed in the same chemicals. Making contact sheets from colour negatives on colour paper was a little more difficult because I had to work in total darkness (or virtually so) and colour filters had to be used to expose them. The results were often not very useful, unlike those from black and white, and selecting images from them was rather hit and miss.
Last week I digitised every frame of all 18 films I took at carnival in 1985 – around 670 pictures – batch processing the results to give a roughly balanced image, discovering quite a few pictures I had previously overlooked. Around a third were worth further processing, and after eliminating some near duplicates and a further round of culling I was left with around 140 I felt were worth adding to the album Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s. The colour work begins on page 3.
None are great pictures, though I think all have some interest. As a whole I felt they backed up my decision to work mainly in black and white in other years. But while some are similar to my black and white pictures, others do show another view of carnival.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
When I told my mother-in-law, a life-long Hull resident, that I was taking a day trip to photograph Goole she shook her head in disbelief, asking me whyever I would want to do that. She wasn’t a great fan of my pictures of Hull either, thinking I dwelt far too much on its less salubrious areas and on those old and dilapidated warehouses and derelict docks.
My only regret looking back is that I didn’t visit Goole more often. True its name isn’t inspiring – but then neither is Hull, perhaps why its more prosperous residents like to remind you it is really called Kingston upon Hull. For some reason the name Goole on Ouse has never been considered, though perhaps it should be Goole upon Dutch River or Don, which was diverted to meet the Ouse here in 1629 by Cornelius Vermuyden, not for the benefit of the few villagers of Goole, but to improve the hunting at Hatfield Chase for King Charlea I. But Goole got a bridge over the new river and barges could carry coal along it from the South Yorkshire coalfield at it could then be transferred to sea-going vessels.
In the 1820s the Aire and Calder Navigation opened a connection to the Dutch River and began the construction of docks and a new town at Goole. The canal opened in 1826 and in 1827 Goole became an official port with custom facilities, its docks able to handle vessels up to 400 tons. It’s main export remained coal until Thatcher closed the mines, with a system of compartment boats – the ‘Tom Puddings’ and special hoists giving a very efficient means to transfer the coal into seagoing ships. Timber was the main import, in part for use as pit props.
Railways first came to Goole in 1848 with a line to Pontefract and Wakefield, but it after the North Eastern Railway line from Doncaster to Hull was built in 1870 that the railway really became important. It was this route from Doncaster that I travelled on many times from and to the south between 1970 and now through Goole; sometimes the train stopped there, but more often travelled through at a leisurely pace, giving time to appreciate its landmark ‘salt an pepper’ water towers before swinging east to cross the River Ouse. But I never got off there until my first day trip in 1983.
The Victorian ‘New Goole’ seemed to have survived reasonably well, and gave a remarkable access to the docks (in those days they were a little less fettered by health and safety), and I spent a full day wandering around and taking pictures, particularly in black and white, but with some in colour too. I’ve returned more recently and it is still an interesting place to visit, though a little less so.
Time for the last post on my series of colour pictures from Hull in my Flickr album which covers the period up to 1985. I didn’t stop photographing Hull then, but I did stop using slide film around the middle of that year, and some of the pictures in the album from 1985 were made using colour negative film. Although this made it easier to get good prints and allowed me to work with a wider range of subjects, it does make the images harder to digitise. I’ll write more about this at a later date. The first few images here are from slides and later ones from negatives.
Barge moored in River Hull, Hull 1983
As well as the colour I was attracted by the seemingly random numbers on the building and the ordered line of them on the prow of the barge, indicating the draught – the distance from the waterline to the lowest part of the hull. This barge, R38, is more or less empty and I think floating, its draught below the lowest mark of 4 (I think in feet), but when fully loaded would be at 9 or a little above. The slide mount crops the image rather more than I intended when making this picture.
Factory, River Hull, 1983
There are new industries on land adjoining the River Hull, particularly on the northern outskirts of the city, around Stockholm Rd, Malmo Rd and Bergen Way, names reflecting the traditional trade, still continuing across the North Sea into the port of Hull. I think this picture was probably made just to the north of Sutton Road bridge.
For me the bank of reeds expressed that these new industries have turned their backs to the river, while traditionally Hull’s industries had been on wharves and dependent on the River Hull for the transport in of raw materials – whale oil, agricultural products and later petroleum products and sometimes the export of bulk products such as edible oils. Now everything moves by lorry.
It is just possible still to recognise this as the view looking upstream from Chapman St Bridge, as the low sheds at left are still standing (or at least were in 2019) but I think most of the rest of the buildings in this view have disappeared and ships such as the Lee Shore and the other vessel upstream on the left bank no longer moor here.
The cocoa works on the right bank was razed to the ground around 10 years ago, and is now Energy Works, a renewable energy site built with the aid of a grant of almost £20 million from the European Regional Development Fund which will power 43,000 homes from waste and develop innovative technologies together with the University of Hull.
S Low’s laundry had long amused me as I regularly travelled along Spring Bank either on foot or more often on the top deck of a Hull Corporation Bus, and I photographed it a number of times. This was the first I had taken on colour negative film and I’m not sure that the colour is as accurate as on the two different versions on slide film you can also see in the album.
This building is still there on Spring Bank, now painted very drably grey and no longer a shop.
Humber Dock Side/Blanket Row, Hull 1985
I apologise for the green cast in this image which I should really correct, but it is perhaps appropriate given that this location, now the Humber Dock Bar and Grill overlooking the marina, describes itself as “Formerly the Green Bricks”.
The picture shows that before becoming a pub and restaurant the area was home to Charles Batte and the Kingston Fruit Co and along the street a number of other businesses, and the green glazed bricks of the pub, opened in 1806 as the New Dock Tavern and around 1838 renamed as the Humber Dock Tavern, taller than the rest of the row, are only just visible above the parked blue van. The green bricks by the Leeds Fireclay Co. Ltd probably date from 1907 and the pub was locally listed in 2006.
This was the final picture from Hull in the album Hull Colour 1972-85 (though I may add more later) which ends with some pictures from Goole.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
More barges on the River Hull, moored around the bend just north of the Isis Oil Mills. Here’s that same bend in 2018:
All of the barges are in the green and yellow colour scheme of Hull’s Gillyott and Scott, formed in 1964 by amalgamation of the five companies of William Gilyott, John A. Scott, T.F. Wood, Furleys and John Deheer.
Some of the barges had the names of birds – such as No 129 Ring Plover at the centre of the group above. Others had to make do with just a simple number or a letter and number such as R50 here. Perhaps it depended on which company they had come from.
Warehouse, River Hull, 1983
This warehouse on the bank of the River Hull had its frontage on High St, immediately upstream from Drypool Bridge. The narrow passage of Blaides Staithe separates it from Blaydes House, the rear of which can be seen at the right of the picture.
Not long after I photographed it, the warehouse was demolished, its site remaining undeveloped when I last visited it 35 years later, though then said to be ‘Under Offer’. In London it would almost certainly have been preserved, probably listed and converted into luxury flats, but Hull’s low property prices signed its death warrant.
Kenfig, dredger, River Hull, 1983
I took quite a few photographs of the Kenfig, which seemed to be moored and quietly rusting in the River Hull for several years, though I think it had previously been responsible for some of the dredging of Humber Dock for the new marina.
I wrote the following when I was commenting daily on a picture of Hull during the 2017 year as City of Culture:
The Kenfig, a grab hopper dredger built in 1954 by Henry Scarr Ltd of Hessle for the British Transport Docks Board at Port Talbot. It was one of the dredgers used to clear the passage into Humber Dock for the Marina, and in 1983 was bought by Jones & Bailey Contractors Ltd of Hull who renamed her Hedon Sand in 1984. Around 5 years later she was scrapped at New Holland.
Kenfig was moored just a little upstream of Drypool Bridge on the River Hull for most of the 1980s, seldom if ever moving.
There are still several dry docks on the lower part of the River Hull, though I think none currently in use, with one scheduled in 2023 to be the centre of a new maritime museum, where it will house Hull’s last sidewinder trawler the Arctic Corsair.
This one is on the opposite side of the river, north of Drypool Bridge and my picture is taken from its road entrance on Great Union St.
The Old Harbour, River Hull, evening. 1983
My apologies for the poor technical quality of this image, which reflects the difference between colour films and the quality we now get from digital images. I think this was probably taken on an ISO400 colour film, while with my current digital camera I would happily work at ISO6400 and get considerably superior results. Photographers will understand this is a difference of five stops. I couldn’t use a very slow shutter speed as the small tanker was moving up river at some speed with the tide.
The view here is looking towards the mouth of the River Hull. The sand and gravel works have now gone and there is a rather ugly hotel on that side of the river. Further down, past the Myton Bridge, built in 1979 and the tidal barrier, the land at Sammy’s Point is now occupied by The Deep.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
A busy scene on the River Hull, probably taken in 1981, though the dates on these images come from the album they are filed in and are sometimes not the exact year, and this could possibly have been made earlier.
The slide mount crops the image slightly and I’m sure that the actual transparency will have included the top of the water tank on the Croda silo at the Isis Oil Mills, but it would have greatly slowed down the photographing of this and the other slides to have removed the slides from their mounts – and would have made handling them much more tricky. And the macro lens and bellows combination I was using with the older Nikon slide holder was fine for mounted slides but could not give proper coverage of the full 24x36mm.
Perhaps because of the problem of slide mounts, many SLR cameras, though marketing on the benefits of actually viewing through the taking lens rather than the separate optics of the rangefinder Leica or twin-lens Rolleiflex had viewfinders that cropped the images and were actually less accurate in their framing than the Leica. Though even the Leica white line frames never quite exactly represented the area that would appear on film (though some lenses came very close) making something of a nonsense the insistence of many photographers of printing the edges of the negative to give a black frame because this represented how they had seen the picture when they pressed the button. It was always more an aesthetic decision.
The silo was still there last time I walked along Bankside, but the location from where I took this picture was behind a locked gate and the buildings to the right of the silo had gone and there was only one vessel, Cargill’s edible oil tanker Swinderby, moored along this reach of the river.
Works, River Hull 1981
I can’t remember now where I took this picture of a wharf across the RIver Hull, somewhere in Hull. But I do remember being attracted by what appears to have been built as an incredibly tall doorway, though it does now appear to have been blocked by a pipe that emerges through it at a little under half its height.
Was it, I mused, made for giraffes?
542 Hessle Rd and phone box, Hull 1981
Hull Corporation was one of 55 local authorities to bid for a licence to provide telephone services in their local area in 1902 and opened its first telephone exchange in a former public baths two years later. While other local authorities who had been granted licences soon abandoned or failed, Hull continued its service after the Postmaster General had gained a monopoly elsewhere across the country.
And when in 1936 the Post Office launched a new red phone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V and decided that all phone boxes across the country should be red, Hull decided while adopting the new design to keep their traditional colour of cream and green, eventually moving to all cream. Hull City Telephone Department continued to innovate – and introduced a message from Santa in 1952. The council hived off the service into a fully owned separate company, Kingston Communications (HULL) PLC in 1987, which was floated on the Stock Exchange in 1999. In 2007 Hull Council sold its remaining stake in the business which changed its name to KCOM Group PLC.
The scene on Hessle Rd is still recognisable, but the shop has changed and no longer has the colour scheme and awning that attracted my attention, and although there is still a phone box I think it may have moved a few feet.
Lincoln Castle, Hessle Forshore, Hessle 1981
The paddle steamer Lincoln Castle was now beached on the Humber foreshore at Hessle, close to the Humber Bridge, and was now a restaurant where we went for afternoon tea. I made it into a rather strange landscape of distant jagged hills in this picture.
Humber Bridge, from Barton on Humber 1982
And of course we went across the Humber Bridge which took us to Barton-on-Humber. Where we walked around a bit and found there wasn’t a great deal there. I took a few photographs, mainly of the Humber Bridge, and I rather like this almost monochrome view.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
I’ve photographed this listed railway swing bridge across the River Hull many times, but I like this particular detail image not just because it gets away from a more standard view and for its colour, but because of the way it puts the bridge into its now largely gone industrial context.
The bridge was built to carry the lines from Hull east to the two North Sea seaside towns of Hornsea and Withernsea. Coming out from Hull Paragon the line turned north to a level crossing at the end of Spring Bank, close to the junction of Princes Avenue. Next to this was Botanic Station, where my wife in her youth would catch a train to Hornsea for the family’s annual week at the seaside. The line then swung east to Stepney Station, close to Stepney Lane on Beverley Road and then on to this bridge across the RIver Hull. The lines to Withernsea and Hornsea diverged on the other side of the river.
Sadly, Dr Beeching, an firm evangelist for the car and the motor trade, put an end to all that and both lines closed to passenger services in October 1964, a few months before my first trip to Hull. Goods services continued to use the bridge and track as far as Hedon until 1968, and all too often I found myself sitting on the top of a bus waiting for the crossing gates to open. In front of me during the evening rush hour then would be hundreds of men on bicycles on their way home.
Nowadays the bridge seldom swings for traffic along the river, though it remains in working order and will do so when necessary. And although there are no trains, the bridge is still in use for cyclists and pedestrians.
Sculcoates, Hull 1980
An evening glow lights up this view of Sculcoates, with the cabin of the Wilmington Bridge at its right-hand edge and the tall silo of the British Extracting Company Ltd at its left. I’ve not been able to find out why the water tank on its roof has a logo with a crown on top of a stylised letter R – please let me know if you know.
I think this view is from the embankment of another disused railway line which took the Hull, Barnsley and West Riding Junction Railway and Dock Company line to its Hull terminus at Cannon St. This had been intended simply as a goods station, but the company (later more simply known as the Hull and Barnsley railway) ran out of money to construct a passenger station closer to the city centre. The line which ran here on the west side of the Beverley and Barmston Drain was a short spur down from Beverley Road Junction on the line still in use for traffic to the eastern docks.
Barges in Old Harbour, Hull 1981
Another view of barges moored in the Old Harbour of the River Hull, secured to each other by some bright orange ropes. I’m sure that some of my more imaginative psychogeographic friends would see it as some kind of weird psychic circuitry.
Red Doors, Pattern Store, Hull 1981
I like the idea of a ‘pattern store’. If you ‘Google’ it you will mainly get sewing patterns, but I think this one will have been at some kind of engineering works. Patternmakers were particularly important in shipbuilding, railway works and foundries, and the patterns they made were usually wooden cut-out shapes which recorded the exact size and shape to which metal had to be cut or cast for a particular purpose. Pattern stores might also be used to hold plans and drawings.
McGrath Bros, Fish Curers, St Mark’s Sq, St James Street, 1981
Unlike the previous picture which I have no idea of where I took it, I can locate this painted gate fairly precisely to St Mark’s Square. Off St James’s St, which is off the Hessle Rd, this bears little resemblance to its Venetian namesake, but is rather more accurately a square, though only two sides carry its name.
McGraths, later ‘Shears (McGraths)’ was a member of the HULL Fish Merchants Protection Association, and although the Cod Wars had more or less killed Hull’s fishing industry, when I took this picture the auctions at the fish dock were still the largest fresh fish auctions in the country, handling over two thirds of our Icelandic fish imports as well as the smaller amounts landed by trawlers still operating from Hull and fish brought by lorry from other ports. Hull got a new state-of-the-art fish fishmarket in 2001, but in 2011 Icelandic fish agent Atlantic Fresh abandoned Hull’s Fishgate for Grimsby.
I love the pointing hand with its flourish directing the reader to the company’s Office.
Barge Torcha and River Hull, Bankside, Hull 1981
I read the name of the barge incorrectly from a black and white version of this picture as it is TORCHA and not TORCH , but here is what I wrote about it.
A little downstream from the Hull Exhaust Centre, visible at left was another viewpoint, I think from a derelict wharf on the River Hull. This image, looking upstream, shows barge Torch, with number 22, owned by Hull’s Gillyott and Scott, a major tug and lighter owner formed in 1964 by amalgamation of the five companies of William Gilyott, John A. Scott, T.F. Wood, Furleys and John Deheer. Gilyott and Scott (Transport) Ltd also owned lorries. The barges are said to have been sold to Dave Hornshaw of Hornshaw Water Transport in Goole. The buildings on the East bank are some of those on the Morley Street ultramarine works, then still part of Reckitt’s – with Hull’s tallest chimney a little out of the frame to the right. Most or all have now been demolished.
Torcha is Spanish for torch, and according to one dictionary in English is a mixture of mud with straw and cob used for roofing. It’s not a word I’ve heard used but the connection with mud would certainly be appropriate for a barge the the River Hull or Humber. Cob is a more usual term of the the mix of clay, sand and straw used in building, the daub in wattle and daub which often also contained cow dung.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
