St.Helens, across Ormskirk Street to the site of the new NatWest Bank yet to be built. Mid 1970s.
I have come to love this hopeless light, neglected and fading.
Two memories come to mind.
Ladies in their older years always wearing scarfs over their heads, though I don’t think it was for religious reasons. Memory is of them hiding curlers or perhaps a bouffount protected from the wind.
A visit from the new manager of the bank when it was completed to the Cowley Sixth form. I cannot remember the purpose of the visit (perhaps recruit future staff?). I recall taking a very low view of the new bank, it seemed to me to be a way of extracting money from the local economy.
Decades later after many scandals and fraud it turned out that I may have had a point.
Waiting for the lights to change at the pedestrian crossing on Bickerstaffe Street, St.Helens approx 1975.
I was returning to the large building on the right which is the Gamble Institute and needed to finish the film I had been given at the photo department there.
I had been loaned a twin lens reflex camera and told to go for a walk and learn to use it.
One of my earliest images, shot on a twin lens reflex camera borrowed from the photo department of the Gamble Institute in St.Helens.
The St.Helens I remember from my youth. I was thirteen and a half when I took this (I have a very clear memory of taking this image).
The Fine Fare shopping bag would place this between 1974 and 1976 I think.