For Café Royal

Women of Hull

Andy Warhol said you can’t take a bad picture of the human face, and he’s right – thank goodness – since as a novice photographer I still hadn’t got to grips with focus controls. What does it tell us this huddle of women covering the generations?

Well they don’t look like they have any pretentions for a start, they seem intent with just getting on with things.

In a tough town the women were often tougher than the men, they held everything together. Men might swagger and rail against their lot, women simply got on and made the best of it.

One of our neighbours, was a young German bride when her husband a British Tommy brought her over to Hull straight after the war. She lived for a while down Hessle Road. Since Hull was one of the most heavily bombed cities in the country, I asked her how she got on with her neighbours, how did people down Hessle Road treat her. She didn’t have any complaints, she said, “they were rough… but friendly.”

‘Pals’ Trawlermen

The Anchor Pub Hessle Road

I think they were a bit embarrassed at being photographed in a way that seems unimaginable now. Today everyone photographs everyone else and then they photograph themselves.

I don’t think they could understand why I wanted to take pictures of them, why I found them interesting?

Years later I was out drinking with a two older trawlermen, one of them was the dad of a friend of mine. He was a big tough man with a sense of humour, and could start fights in far flung bars just out of sheer boredom to see what would happen. He was going back to sea at some ghastly hour early the following morning, I asked him how he felt about that, he said, “It’s funny, but even after all these years I still feel frightened.”

That’s why these men are interesting, but I wouldn’t know it at the time. All I could see where a couple of lads who could drink a lot.

Three day millionaire

The Anchor Pub Hessle Road

We had to choose ‘Archetypes’ for a college project. I settled on ‘Deckie Learners’. I remember being disappointed that this chap Mick didn’t have the right hairstyle – a greased quiff with the ducks-arse finish.

I wanted him to fit an image I had of what a Deckie Learner should be. They had a reputation for being tough and big drinkers who could cause trouble, so I posed him against the bar and asked him to look mean… but he was holding a half pint, another disappointment.

It’s a dishonest attempt at a portrait.

But Mick transcends all that with his own honesty. A young man in an immaculate suit, out to celebrate his short-lived wealth. Simply pleased to be where he was, young and alive and cash in his pocket.

His immaculate suit with its pleated back and wide waistband, white socks and loafers a jubilant celebration of his tribe.

The Pathologist

The Theatre Tavern

I was told that the older gent at the bar was Hull’s leading police pathologist. Whether that was true or not, I don’t know, but Queen’s Gardens cop shop was just around the corner and his clothing was certainly of a smarter cut than the other customers, so maybe. What strikes me now is the overcoat and the hat. No one wears overcoats in bars these days, and not many people wear hats. When I look at my old contact sheets everyone is sat around in overcoats, headscarfs and hats, which makes me think the pubs can’t have been heated very well. Not that it seemed to matter, most pubs were jam packed with bodies; creating noise, smoke, laughter, warmth and human contact. Maybe that’s what the Pathologist was raising his glass to – life.

Trinity House boys

Taken in the old Paragon Bus Station, one of my first photographs is just an experiment really, testing out a long lens, but Clee liked it. So he printed it up for me.

This was my first realisation that these little strips

of negatives once magnified on to paper could give you interesting compositions and tell intriguing stories. But the biggest surprise of all was the power of black and white photography to transform the world of the everyday.

Man in the street

I don’t know what the handbag signifies, maybe a different sexual orientation, maybe just a place to keep his cigs and money. This was 1973, we had a long way to go regarding women’s rights, gays and racial prejudice – and as for trans gender? I didn’t even know what it meant. Germaine Greer had just published The Female Eunuch, inviting admiration from many, but loathing and derogatory remarks from a voluble hard core. If you were different from the crowd it paid to keep your head down and hope no one much noticed. Then again maybe this chap didn’t give a monkey’s what anyone thought. Hull folk had a long tradition of going their own way.

Man in the Paragon Pub

This was one of my favourite pubs, not for the beer but for the light. Being a novice photographer I struggled to control the exposures, but the seed had been sown. I went on to produce a body of work called ‘Barlife’, a study of bars, cafés and pool halls, any place where people and alcohol mix.

But the battle to control the light is still a hit and miss affair.

The Old Guard

The Theatre Tavern

Taken in The Theatre Tavern Queen’s Gardens, a pub that sadly is no longer with us. A fabulous boozer that let in lots of natural light that I thought might make for some dramatic portraits. I suppose I could have titled it ‘God’s waiting room’. They seem quite stoical, waiting for the inevitable, speeded up no doubt by the roll your own fags that never seemed to leave their lips. And you couldn’t cheat the Grim Reaper by claiming you never smoked, you were probably on 40 a day as a passive smoker judging by the blue fug in most bars.

Women at the Bus Station

Paragon Bus Station

I remember being very annoyed that I couldn’t get anything interesting out of this scene. The women just sat there, the bus shelter was just an every day scene, so familiar it was boring. Now I wish I’d made an entire project of the place and the people who just sat or stood and waited.

The crowded bar

The Theatre Tavern

Was it colder in Hull in the 1970’s? Probably. We seemed to get snow in the winter, ice cold winds that cut right through you and lingering damp freezing fog. People dressed against the cold.

It was a practical, not a designer world – that was yet to come.

Pubs had mostly hard chairs, Formica top tables and functional strip lighting. This photograph would have been taken at lunchtime and as you can see, it’s packed. This was where the generations mixed, everybody talked to everybody else. As you aged your pub remained more or less the same, an oasis of dependability in an uncertain world, the themed pub that catered only for the young still only a glint in some marketing man’s eye.

This little piggy

I thought I might have a Cartier Bresson ‘Decisive moment’ here, something to do with the brevity of childhood and the inevitable brutality of the future.

Rubbish really.

It’s a kid in a pram and a butcher carrying some carcasses.

Now what strikes me is you don’t get prams like this any more, and where is the kid’s mam anyway? Popped into the shops? These days we don’t dare leave prams with children alone, and just as unacceptable would be the state of the butchers white coat, not to mention carrying bloodied carcasses in full view of the public down a busy street.

Doorsteps

I liked the way both the child and the dog looked at me from their open front doors, both curious but accepting, standing on their doorsteps as equals, quietly confident in their right to be there.

The image felt a bit sad to me. We lived on Bilton Grange a relatively new housing estate; it was all fresh air, green verges, trees and parks. A place of bright hope after the Second World War.

These streets seemed a shabby place to live

in comparison. But they held communities who looked out for each other.

When they knocked Hessle Road about and moved the families that had lived there for generations to the big estates like Bransholme it wasn’t a success.

They ended up pulling newly built houses down because people didn’t want to live in a neighbourhood without neighbours.