Nick Hedges' book Home is principally a photographic record of the post-war housing crisis and the appalling conditions in which millions were forced to live, but it also touches on what came after: "new Jerusalems ... created in our green and pleasant land" that in many cases turned out to be little better than the homes that they had replaced.
It is this turbulent period in Newcastle's history that fellow photographer Peter Brabban captured, beginning in 1966 when he was just 18. Cafe Royal Books have recently published a selection of his images under the title The North East: 1966-1982, and this article from the Chronicle gives a flavour of the pamphlet's contents.
Everywhere you looked, it seems, there was dereliction or development, decay or modernisation. As Brabban has noted, at the same time that high-rise tower blocks were under construction, heavy industry remained at the heart of the city (almost literally), anchoring it to its past even as planners attempted to build for a brighter future.
Talking to David Morton, the Chronicle's Nostalgia Editor (!), Brabban fondly recalls how his brother showed him not only how to take photos but also how to develop them: "[t]he whole panoply of chemicals, temperatures and timings." For Brabban, it wasn't so much specific subject matter that inspired him, as the process of physically making a picture: "It was watching the image appear on the print in the developer which fired up my passion for photography, a passion that is still with me." Maybe this is why many higher-education photography courses continue to place importance on darkroom practice, even though it no longer serves any real practical purpose?
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