Pilgrim Street

This photograph was taken near the Pilgrim Street area, I’m not certain where exactly. There were a lot of boarded up shops and buildings but not much graffiti.

Maybe they had only just been vacated. I think this was a ‘village hall’ type of place. Once upon a time someone had made a beautiful job of very carefully hand-rendering the word ‘Notices’. This picture has a sad, melancholy, haunted feel to it. To me that makes it very powerful. Were there ever any notices I wonder? I think the image is a visual metaphor for the recession – then as now.

Another Pilgrim Street area picture. Another boarded up premises.

Again that empty feeling of sadness and loss. The number 38, in the jaunty style seen on the front of  many suburban homes, trying and failing to put on a brave face. It’s as if something incredibly souless happened here.

From a compositional point of view I was always attracted to strong shapes. I find geometry in this picture is very appealing. The complete lack of soft edges adds to the overall impression of hard times.

Clearly, I was really fond of a central dividing vertical line in the composition as this device crops up in a few pictures – I like the contrast in the two halves, the way it feels like 2 pictures put together.

The skinny trees in the background on the left look a bit post-nuclear. The ‘H’ fire hydrant signs have really been abused, by the elements as well as vandals. I’m intrigued as to what drew me to shoot such (in retrospect) desolate photographs as I’m normally interested in cleaner, more charming images. Maybe it’s simply because in this case I was answering a brief. I wonder what Carl is doing now?

The Pilgrim Bar/Restaurant is still there today. The area feels much brighter     and more vibrant than it does on the winter afternoon when I originally took     this photograph.

I like the 3 different planes in this image. The building on the near left of the picture, on the corner of Rice Street, is long gone. New-build properties now stand in its place. Regarding the notice board; I don’t remember the Rainbow Club in Liverpool 8 and the wordy, typewritten flyers seem to be alluding to some moral dilemma for The Church.