A visit to Photo North

I took a trip to Leeds today to visit Photo North. It’s the second time I’ve visited the event – the first being when it was on at Manchester last year. There are a number of photographer’s work being exhibited and a variety of lectures taking place over the three days of the event. I visited today and sat in two of the lectures.

The first was by Barry Lewis, a photographer whose work I was first aquainted with via his book Butlins Holiday Camp 1982, an excellent collection of his work photographing the Skegness holiday camp during what was probably a period of decline at a point where many Britons were starting to venture to the continent for their holidays (where sunshine and warmth would be almost guaranteed), rather than holiday camp experience that had ran largely unchanged since the 1930s. It was an entertaining lecture where he presented excerps from a number of his bodies of work. I bought myself a copy of one of his books, Miami Beach 1988-1995, which he kindly signed for me.

The second lecture was by Richard Davies who gave an autoboigraphical account of how hismove to Manchester from Birmingham in the late 1980s coincided with one of the most progressive times in the city’s musical scene – something he was well placed to take advantage of at a time when few others were making photographs of the bands and acts emerging from the Madchester scene at the time.

It was a good day out, and I also managed to get some nice light to shoot a roll of film in the nearby university complex, an location full of interesting architecture, and I’m hoping the pictures turn out ok.

Today’s picture has nothing to do with the events of my trip, it was taken six weeks ago near Kelham Island in Sheffield. It’s a nice photograph though, so it gets a place here on the blog.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Fujifilm Superia X-tra 400. Lab Developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken 5 February 2023.

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