"Photography is a very clichéd medium, so if you are doing clichés you have to do them well." - photographer Colin Jones, quoted in the introduction to his 2002 book Grafters. The industrial north back in the day - miners, shipyard workers, grime, smoking chimneys, terraced houses, scruffy kids playing in the street - is ripe with cliché, but, yes, he does it well.
From the Hyman Collection:
Docker, Liverpool, 1093.
Children playing in front of a corner shop, Benwell, Newcastle, 1963.
A street off Scotswood Road, Benwell, Newcastle, 1963.
Steelworkers, Consett, County Durham, 1980.
Steel works, Consett, County Durham, 1980.
A shopkeeper washing her doorstep, Benwell, Newcastle 1963.
West Hartlepool, 1963.
[All photos © Colin Jones.]
When you wonder why people went Communist, imagine looking at this and thinking "this is the future of humanity if capitalism wins". Not quite so hard to imagine that a red world would be preferable to a gray one.
Posted by: DensityDuck | October 23, 2015 at 05:24 AM
@DensityDuck
Have you ever seen pictures of countries after they've had Communism for forty years?
Posted by: MD | October 23, 2015 at 07:47 AM
I grew up in Consett, leaving around 1980. It was a great working community and I think an excellent place to grow up. Black white pictures can create a sense of gloom, but it wasn't so. It was a place with a purpose, with industry in the broader sense. A lot of churches and a lot of pubs, Boys Brigade, Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, Women's Institute, great schools, weekly market in the town center, two cinemas and it was surround by the most beautiful north pennines countryside you could imagine. A little red dust would mess with the laundry as it dried on the line, and there was an occasional stink at the coke works. The local pits had all closed by 1980, and the steelworks was about to do thesame. That's when it died. But when the smoke was billowing, there was nowt wrong with it.
Thanks for posting these pictures.
Posted by: Paul S. | October 23, 2015 at 07:14 PM