Hidden Salford: Artworks full shoot

Having being given the green light to go ahead with the documenting of Artworks both from  UHC.org and the Artworks teams, in addition to Quay News, who really seemed to be behind the idea. I arranged a day suitable day to shoot and as I wanted as much natural light as possible, time for doing this was limited as we were now in full British winter time. Luckily, the day I chose was bright and sunny which helped enormously with some of the larger interiors. What I didn’t anticipate was how long some of the shots would take, especially in the larger areas and getting the right angle and lighting to work in my favour was a challenge. As I was shooting for both the Quay News brief and also UHC & Artworks as well as being mindful of the Salford Museum brief I had to be mindful of the requirements for each client and choosing the right areas for each was critical. As the majority of the shots for Quay News were to engage with artists, with a smaller proportion being given over to the environment and spaces, It was easy to get carried away and focus on some of the amazing internal spaces, several of which gave me ideas for other projects. Some resolve was clearly needed and a bold decision; I needed clarity on my approach for each shoot, so I decided to separate the shoots for Quay News and UHC and made arrangements to go in on another day for the UHC shoot, this way I could focus solely on getting the ten shots that would serve the briefs for Quay News & Salford Museum to best of my ability. As was clear by the shots I took the rest of that day, which were very focused on what was needed, It was the right choice to make.

Contact sheets and commentary:

Here then are a series of contact sheets with accompanying comments for some of shots I took that day totalling some 700+ images…

Internal spaces: One of the benefits of shooting the buildings’ empty spaces and workshops, was that the only thing I needed to think about when shooting, was trying to get the right angles to capture the sense of space and atmosphere these areas exuded. As can be seen by the contact sheets below, these images are mostly unedited and include a few experiments whilst I tried to gain the aforementioned.

Studio Spaces: On the other hand shooting some of the resident artists and designers in their studios was a tougher ask, especially the graphic designers. The problem here is that I wanted to take my images as candidly as possible and wanted to capture the designers engaging with their work rather than my lens, this proved challenging due the circumstances. The problem lay with the fact that these resident studios were compact and closed off from the main areas of the building to maintain heat and reduce outside noise. This meant that as soon as I entered the studio space I was the focus of attention and my camera put the designers on their guard, something that comes across in the following two contact sheets. As time was precious and I didn’t want to be too disruptive I couldn’t stay in the studios long enough to allow the designers to let their guard down. At one point one of the designer even got a fit of nervous giggling and had to stop working. This had serious implications with my final selection as it meant that these shots had less potential to make my final ten.

Workshop and Co-operative Spaces: The best shots for me and the ones I found the most enjoyable were in the artists open workshop and the fashion designer studio. Because these were more open environments I found it easier to be unobtrusive and gained some really good shots of the artists working on individual and co-operative pieces. These shine through on the contact sheets, though I admit they are a little on the small side in this manner. As such I have put together a small gallery of some of the better shots from then whole shoot at the end of this post, so as to gain a better appreciation.

Summary: On the whole it was a fun but tiring day but I made a few new friends and contacts, including the Artist James Moss who asked me to help document his work for an upcoming exhibition, the pieces he had been working on were to be shown in. In addition NorfolkHawker fashions have also asked me to collaborate on documenting their works as and when they need, both for promotion and cataloguing. In addition to my documenting work for Castlefield Gallery in Manchester I was beginning to find a niche in something I really enjoyed doing and that others had a use for – Food for thought in a wider sense, in terms of professional practice and a possible career avenue.

Gallery:

Hidden Salford: A positive view.

New Direction.

Following on from my initial ideas, where the gist was firmly on a negative or a particular stereotype – that being Salford was an impoverishment and run-down, dangerous place. I decided to consider my own personal experience of Salford which on the whole has been mostly positive, having worked and now studying there. With this latter thought in mind, I decided to take a different angle, the idea of a Salford as an area of creativity and inspiration. However, I wanted to avoid an area of Salford which had already seen rapid regeneration and investment at the former site of Manchester Docks at Salford Quays.

Manchester Docks 1971
(Image courtesy of http://rmhh.co.uk/manchester/pages/manchester_docks_1971.html)

This area is now known as Media City,a modern hub for entertainment services, museums and the lifestyle savvy who want an exclusive place to live and can afford it. It is home to various BBC Television services, ITV Granada and the media campus of the University of Salford, also the Lowry Gallery and Theatre as well as the Imperial War Museum North, plus a host of private offices and apartment complexes. The area is now a hub for job creation and cultural activity and as such is an attraction in it’s own right, however, it has been photographed, documented and filmed to the point of saturation and it’s reputation as a regeneration success story, almost makes it an entity unto itself and not a part of Salford at all. Hence, the notion of finding anything hidden and not previously covered in media City was unlikely.

There’s more information here on the regeneration of Manchester Docks into the now successful Media City /Salford Quays area, in the PDF Milestones – The Story of Salford Quays.

Aerial view of Media City, Salford (Image courtesy of – http://www.flickr.com/photos/salforduniversity/5621694228/)

 A positive, but hidden view.

Having decided that I wanted to document something creative and positive in Salford that wasn’t attached to the Media City and Salford Quays area, I began to look for some direction and found there was a  number of initiatives under the guise of the Salford Strategic Partnership (Partners IN Salford), set up to improve the lives and environment of the city & it’s various boroughs. Part of this strategy is the development of culture and leisure facilities, something that drives economic growth and renewal for the designated area where this occurs. Sharon Zukin, talks about this in her book The cultures of Cities…

Zukin argues that cities have come to rely on the symbolic economy as an engine for economic growth. And asserts that we cannot “speak about cities today without understanding (a) how cities use culture as an economic base; (b) how capitalizing on culture spills over into the privatization and militarization of public space; and (c) how the power of culture is related to the aesthetics of fear” (Zukin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995.)

The above paragraph could very easily be applied to Media City in that the area is owned and managed by Peel Media and is for the most part private land. Built in order to gentrify and generate real capital via the cultural capital the area now operates on.

If my photo documentary was to succeed I needed something much smaller and less concerned with the generation of wealth for land owners and more about the local community. A chance conversation with an artist friend gave me the break I needed, as the visual arts and design co-operative he was Artistic Director of, had recently moved into newly acquired premises in Greengate, in Ordsall, One of the more impoverished and culturally redundant areas of Salford.

The former Trident Lighting Warehouse in Greengate, Ordsall before being acquired by UHC.org and Artworks Atelier. (Image courtesy of Google Maps )

Situated on the former site of the Trident Lighting Warehouse – Artworks Atelier had already begun a process of re-purposing the building into art studios, resident artists pods, design studios and workshops and more was planned, including a dedicated art gallery and exhibition space, a cafe / restaurant and an event and performance space. I made a formal request to document the current transformations and the working artists already resident. Thankfully he agreed and I made arrangements for a test shoot of the building.

My next posts will cover this test shoot and a shoot I rejected prior to the Artworks idea coming to fruition.