Steel
Virtual tour here.
The project, Regeneration, documented the changing ways of life, urban landscape and working identities of Sheffield over a period of time when the city was moving away from heavy manufacturing to the service industries. The changes occurred during the time generally known as Thatcher’s Britain, in the aftermath of the miners’ strike and a period of upheaval in society.
Regeneration was organised by Matthew Conduit and exhibited at the Untitled Gallery (now Site) and the photographers commissioned were John Kippin, John Darwell, Mike Black, Berris Connolly, Tim Smith, Anna Fox, John Davies, Ken Phillip, Iain Stewart, Bill Stephenson, Graham Gaunt, Patrick Sutherland, Adrian Wynn, and later on, myself. Matthew Conduit has organised a contemporary exhibition looking back at this time and the remarkable body of work that these photographers generated.
I joined the project when analogue photography was still the only option. I used two cameras, both Plaubels, including the Pro-Shift which allowed me to take very wide angle views. I was interested in the urban landscape and what this revealed about the society.
Nostalgia
This is what I wrote for the contemporary book out in October when the exhibition launches:
“Sheffield is primarily a landscape made for work’ wrote Beatrix Campbell in the 1980s. By the end of the decade, sites of heavy manufacturing, the steel mills, and workers’ housing were vanishing, the city targeting a future of commercial enterprise, leisure, and tourism.
The steel workers were sometimes commemorated in sculpture or intricate brickwork on the side of a building, but they became the history; gentrification was the future. The nature of work had changed in Thatcher’s Britain. I joined the project in the early 90s, seeing a transformational process made by huge earth movers and landscaping, with tree and shrub planting and post-modern architectural revamps. At the time there were expansive flat holes in the landscape, waiting for new buildings, new businesses. One of these areas was completely covered in crumbled brick, with detritus blowing in the wind - old invoices from the disappeared steelworks, and microfilm, the best way to record documents in the pre-digital era.
I used some of these discarded documents in the panels I made, concerned with trying to make comparisons between the history of the city and what was taking place in the late 80s. The new era and ethos seemed rather insubstantial. Meadowhall had been built and was already catering for the masses who flocked to its gold and marble corridors. A friend worked on painting the interior, which had classical allusions and a lot of ‘distressing’ because history had to be referenced. Out-of-town shopping centres had become hugely popular, largely because of easy and extensive car parking, with familiar town-centre shops, which unfortunately had moved from the high street.
After the project I never went back to Meadowhall, and my daughter who studied in Sheffield, refused to get a job there, even though it was within easy reach of the city due to the recently built Supertram. Nonetheless, it appeared to be an exciting time for people who lived in Sheffield. In general, people took great interest in the new building programme and they would often wander out after work to see the progress. Yet, according to comments from people I met, some features were sorely missed, such as the ‘Hole in the Road’ at Castle Square, a pedestrian underpass built in the 1960s, when rapidity of movement became a town planners’ goal.
It can be seen in my work with a few lingering shops, the pedestrians using subways under the traffic roundabout for access. The Hole in the Road suffered in the general process of entropy, its form outlived and becoming dangerous. Shortly after, it too vanished from the landscape.”
Cutquicker
Although it was a long time ago I still have strong memories of the people I ran into who would start a conversation about the changes happening in the city. Mostly left-wing, they decried the “Thatcher ethos” which resulted in hardship when the steelworks failed.
The exhibition is showing at Weston Park, Sheffield Museums, opening on October 23rd 2020 and continuing for some months until May 3rd 2021. A book is also is published to accompany the exhibition with examples of the photographers’ work and their texts.The book has sold out but a second edition should be forthcoming.