Clueless.
And not just about photography.
These were some of my first attempts with a camera. I was after something romantic, picturesque, maybe in the manner of Frank Sutcliffe. He’d done good stuff further up the coast in Whitby, but decades earlier and with more primitive equipment.
I didn’t realize at the time this was the last of it, the very edge of Frank’s world. He would have recognized the barges, the rough hairy ropes and faded paintwork, the bulwarks and rotting timbers, the ancient brick, the grim grime of a working river.
My old lecturer thought they were ‘good student photographs’, that is, nothing much to tell your mam about. It was a pedestrian everyday scene, something we took for granted and I’d got the light readings right that was all.
Neither of us knew what was drifting away from us at the time.
Looking closely at the Kodak negatives that made these images all you can see are clumped, blotchy lumps of mangled chemical colours. Only when you draw back do things begin to make sense, not for film the pin sharp, antiseptically cruel world of perfect squares of pixel capture. Older film is more like a glance that holds the grabbed image as an imprecise memory. It’s not as sharp, it’s softer, letting the imagination fill in the gaps.
The river has changed, it’s been cleaned up, sanitized, we live in a digital age.
I should have taken more while I had the chance – a lot more, I mean like everything.
‘You don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone’, as the singer said.

These images are available as:
FINE ART GICLÉE PRINTS
They can be bought directly from me; simply email me the name of the print you would like to order and the size and we can take it from there. The costs of prints are listed below.
Email: dmbandb@hotmail.com

Alternatively you can order the prints for Hull International Photography Gallery Princes Quay Hull.

Prints on A3 (11.69 inches x 16.53 inches) fine art
water colour paper £40 + £5 P&P