The one born in St.Helens in 1961.
Team photos taken at Cowley Boys School in the mid to late 1970s.
It was sleeting as I took the pictures. As always I shot a few frames of each team so as to minimise the chance of anyone spoiling the shot by blinking or gesticulating.
Some forty years after taking these images I can recover a time element by animating between the three negatives, a highish definition black and white video of a time gone.
A separate image from another day and using the side of the quad rather than the steps.
Fellow Cowley pupil Robert Williams takes a photo as I record him and Victoria Park during a 6th form Photo Society outing in 1979.
Pilkingtons Glass was a major manufacturer based in the town and employed a whole lot of townsfolk in the factories dotted around.
A gateway to possibilities, later to become John Lennon airport. Not long after “British Airways” became just “British”, this was later reversed after people realized it was just silly.
Looking down was much better than looking across. My earliest stock photography images with Tony Stone Photolibrary were travel shots including this one that was given the number T70L 101094-1T.
I have come to love this hopeless light, neglected and fading.
Two memories come to mind.
Ladies in their older years always wearing scarfs over their heads, though I don’t think it was for religious reasons. Memory is of them hiding curlers or perhaps a bouffount protected from the wind.
A visit from the new manager of the bank when it was completed to the Cowley Sixth form. I cannot remember the purpose of the visit (perhaps recruit future staff?). I recall taking a very low view of the new bank, it seemed to me to be a way of extracting money from the local economy.
Decades later after many scandals and fraud it turned out that I may have had a point.
St.Helens, my home town is about half way between Manchester and Liverpool. I don’t recall many trips to either city but this (rare for me) 1970s colour image shows me departing from Liverpool and heading towards New Brighton on the ferry.
I must have been 3 or 4 years old when I first saw a large body of water. It was the Mersey Estuary seen from the docks. In that one moment I remember being completely overwhelmed seeing the waves dancing with the wind and the sheer scale of the scene in front of me filled me with awe.
The Summer of 1979 being the end of secondary education for me it was a treat when a film company used the school as a location in the final week of term. Being a little less than honest in saying “I was from the school magazine” I was fortunate that the director Hugh Hudson allowed me to photograph the scene he was filming in the changing room. This was destined to be the Paris Olympics changing room towards the end of the film “Chariots of fire”. Click on the image to see the whole sequence from 1979.