Higher Parr Street
St.Helens
A miserable day
Ormskirk Street, St.Helens, Merseyside 1978. Building site for the Nat West Bank.
Wearing a long coat, a head scarf and with a plastic bag in hand a lady makes her way across the road.
In photography it’s easy to glamorise, to photograph the extra ordinary. It’s harder to document the ordinary.
In the gloom and the cold I found a kind of beauty.
4th and 5th form official schools photographer
I never got into rugby myself but was fortunate to miss games periods to do photography. A side effect was to become the sports teams photographer for the school. All the moneys from the sale of prints went back into buying film, chemicals and paper.
Extra maths class 1978/9
So greatful to the teachers who had the patience to help me understand mathematics. I won a school prize in the 5th form, £5 towards a book, I chose the focal encyclapedia of photography. A little certificate was pasted into the front of the book, the award was for “Progress”. I went from being very poor to mediocrity – a huge improvement! If I had not gone to Cowley school I would have totally failed academically.
Making Clouds
1979. Most of the Chimneys at Pilkington Glass Works in St.Helens were the original Brick ones built in Victorian times. When I was born Queen Victoria had only been dead 60 years. Time moved slower in the North of England and the change from Victorian times was slow. Growing up in a house with a few rooms and an outside toilet was normal. Dad got better jobs in the early 1970s so we moved into a house with a bathroom.
Fellow Photographer
Atherton Street, St.Helens. 1979.
I took this during an exchange visit in 1979. Musicians and choir from the Fanny Leicht Gymnasium in Stuttgart were visting Cowley school and they were all staying with local families.
I was walking with a large group of the visiting pupils into the town centre; they were due to meet the Mayor. The Germans were non plussed by the tiny houses and how old they were, a bit of a culture shock for them it seemed.
I had some nice chats with this chap about photography. I may of had a Pentax K1000 camera by then (or might still have had my Zenith E). His camera was more impressive! It would be lovely to get back in touch if he ever sees this. stephen@copyrightimage.co.uk
Guided by the universe
I dont show all my images here, some have meaning only for a small group of people.
Last week I was looking through some old pictures from my time at Cowley School in St.Helens and came across this picture of two fellow pupils enjoying a tea break in the sixth form centre. Not the best picture in the world but I was struck by the beautiful smile of the girl on the left. Her name is Jean Evans. Jean also went to my primary school.
I posted the picture onto the Old Cowleans facebook page for other to see and within an hour had a reply from someone who had the same day heard from Jeans husband of her death.
The news made me sad of course. The coincidence was striking. It had been a busy day and I should have been on a screen break, instead I looked through my old images and this one stood out and I wanted to share it.
I have not talked to or seen Jean for 43 years but in my mind I could have taken this picture yesterday.
Thank you for your lovely smile Jean.
Summer day
View down Victoria Park from the North Road , Rutland street entrance (St.Marks Gate).
Rare 35mm colour transparency, Mid 1970s. Zenit E camera 58mm Helios 44 lens.
Getting into Polytechnic with only one A level
I was keen to study Photography after school and Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham offered a three year course in visual communications photography and film.
I turned up for an interview there with a very small portfolio of images, I was still at school and in retrospect should have done a foundation course at the local art collage before even trying there.
Euan Duff the course leader at Trent was a little hum and ha’ry about things till I showed him these slides and how I talked about documenting ordinary things around me. This was exactly the button to push with Euan (I found out afterwards) as he had undergone a journey of documenting the everyday since the 1950s.
A game of monopoly at Cowley sixth form centre became my chance to advance to Trent. When I told the Polytechnic I had only achieved one A level instead of the two required to join the course I was told to “Come anyway” a “get out of jail card” for me,, sometimes the dice are lucky.
Preparing Sunday dinner in the 1970s
Approx. 1978. In the kitchen in our house in Haydock. Mum prepares the meal. Dad is in his Sunday best in the pub across town with his brothers drinking beer, a drive home in the Austin 1100 then a short sleep before eating.
Bicycles
Two bikes in the garage of our house in Ledger Road, Haydock. Taken in approx 1978.
I seem to remember playing with depth of field and perhaps using a small aperture (f16) on my Russian Lubitel II 6×6 camera to get the most depth of field.
Transparency film in this format was expensive so I was careful to take time with each image.
The crazy pathed floor shows signs of the (normal!) oil leak of the family Austin 1100 car. The car was bought second or third hand for either £25 or £70 (one of the two).
The whole garage was built using cynder blocks produce at the Parr Bold power station and brought back a trunkfull at a time.
My father did most of the work with his brother Bob helping with the wood work. As a teenage boy I should have helped him with the build but seemed to prefer
listening to my radio and reading in my bedroom. I should of course helped more but I did not.
He built it with crude materials but built it well, it was far wider than most UK garages, garages that would struggle to contain a car let alone allow someone to open the car door to get out.
Reluctantance at the start
Haydock Racecourse N.W. England. Summer 1980. Lining up for the race.
Pentax K1000 camera, Kodachrome 25 transparency film.
Escaping the rain at the Gamble Institute, St.Helens
The rain was coming down hard. As a young lad in the late 1970s I
t was not long before I tried a frame of film in my cheap Chinese Seagul 203 camera.
I had just completed a Saturday morning photograhy class in the days when local councils held free education classes for its people.
Disdain in the lab
Chemistry lab in the newly mixed 6th Form centre at the old Cowley Boys site. Home processed E4 transparency film.
Chalon Way Car Park
View from Chalon Way Car Park, St.Helens approx 1977.
Taken on a Saturday morning walk from the photo department of the Gamble Institute. Given freedom (and film) to walk around town and document what we saw. I headed to the multi-storey car park and photographed Pilkington Glass works next to St.Helens town centre.
Looking down I thought it also worthwhile at the ground based car park at the rear of the multi-storey. Of interest is the oil patches on the unoccupied bays, cars in the 1970s all seemed to slowly leak oil as part of their functioning.
School show
Even Latin Masters could show their funny side when on stage at the school show.
Cowley boys school, St.Helens, later 1970s.
Substitute teacher
Cowley High School. Mixed 6th form class sometime between 1978 and 1980. Our master was away so we got to revise our coursework as the substitute teacher carried on reading his paper (no doubt lifted from his break period in the staff room).
No talking at the back of the class.
French lesson in progress, Crowley boys school 1977 or 1978. Unseen by the teacher I got out my Zenith E camera and took a few shots. The shutter was loud so I’m not sure how I managed to take more than one before the teacher noticed but there are two adjacent negatives rather than one.
I generally sat at the back of the class to avoid being noticed too much by the teachers. Not that I was up to no good, I just didnt think of myself as academic. Taking photographs seemed meaningful though my activities seemed not to really register with others. I’m glad I took the picture as I dont think there are many images of live classrooms from the period, true documentary.
A later documentary project of a Nottingham school allowed me to take similar images of a real life lessons in a private boys school but the difference was I was there as an outsider and conspicuous, here I was part of the scene.
Possibly the only (or one of a very few) real life images of “talking at the back of a class”, searching for similar images on Goolge brings up stock images that have been setup and lack veracity.