Liverpool : 1972 – 2025 Volume 1
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The Forgotten Liverpool: Stories from the 1980s
When I took this photograph in 1980, Liverpool was in the midst of profound economic and social upheaval. It later emerged that the government had placed the city into a policy of “managed decline”, and public investment had fallen to an historic low.
The distant tower of the Cathedral serves as a visual anchor. In the foreground lie the remains of demolished terraced houses: fractured brick walls, collapsed roofs, empty foundations, and piles of rubble. I climbed onto a wall to make this photograph—something I would be unable to do today.
The route to the Cathedral is quite literally obstructed by ruins. Knowing what happened just a year later, during the 1981 Toxteth uprising, adds another layer of meaning to the image. Although the photograph predates those events, it now seems almost prophetic. This abandoned landscape speaks of neglect, disinvestment, and communities placed under immense pressure. What I remember most, however, is the silence. As I stood there, I found myself imagining the lives of the people who had once filled these small terraced houses with activity and routine.
I have always believed that a city’s true identity resides not in its great monuments but in the streets and houses where ordinary people live. I placed the Cathedral beyond this landscape of abandonment because Liverpool’s history cannot be understood through its landmarks alone. It must also be read in the traces of the communities that were displaced or erased.
The Dialogue of Two Generations in London
Here we have two photographs separated by roughly four decades: the central figure from Brick Lane in the 1980s and the younger figure from Canary Wharf in 2026. I’ve tried to create a dialogue about continuity, displacement, and the changing identity of East London.
I photographed the older man as he walked slowly down Brick Lane with the aid of a walking stick. I cut out his figure and rephotographed it. His downward gaze, cigarette, and stillness suggest introspection and fatigue. His bald head and worn jacket give him a sculptural presence; to me, he is like a monument to a disappearing generation. He becomes the emotional anchor around which everything else revolves.
In contrast, the smaller figure on the left is walking quickly across a bridge in Canary Wharf, phone in hand rather than engaging with his surroundings. He represents a very different relationship with the city. He is detached from the older man and occupies another psychological and historical space.
Two worlds collide here. The Brick Lane man stands for the older East End, while the Canary Wharf figure represents the digital, financial, and globally connected London of today.
These are two lives occupying the same geographical landscape but belonging to different historical moments. Are these figures connected by history, or divided by it? The two subjects move through parallel worlds without ever meeting.
The red horizontal bands resemble veins, suggesting that a connection between past and present still remains. I see the work as a meditation on how photomontage can compress decades into a single, unresolved moment.
During the 1980s I often saw this woman pushing her shopping trolley through Spitalfields. I admired her quiet determination as she made her way around the Sunday market in search of bargains. The trolley carried her purchases, but it also seemed to steady her steps.
The 1980s brought profound social and economic change to the East End, yet I suspect that, for her, material circumstances had changed very little over the course of her life. I could only respect this elderly, physically frail woman. Her heavy overcoat, headscarf and sensible shoes spoke of a generation shaped by wartime austerity. In the East End of the 1980s, many older residents were among the last to remember the Blitz, the hardships of post-war poverty, and the area’s long-established Jewish working-class communities.
When I moved to the East End in 1982, the tower block where I lived was home to many elderly Jewish residents, each with a fascinating story to tell. The woman who lived on the floor below me was always impeccably turned out and made the finest pastries I have ever been offered by a neighbour. As the years passed, the pastries gave way to curry as the block gradually became home to mainly Bangladeshi families. If I was lucky, a knock on the door often meant a plate of delicious food from a generous neighbour.
In the early 1980s, Spitalfields stood on the threshold of transformation. Much of the old East End remained poor and semi-derelict, but redevelopment and gentrification were already beginning to reshape the area. I hope these photographs preserve something of that vanished world before it disappeared almost entirely.
Everyday Stories: A Walk Through East London’s History
I think I photographed this woman a number of times during my wanderings around Whitechapel in the 1980s. On this occasion she stood out because of her determined walking style, the fag in her mouth and her customised push chair redesigned for shopping.
Next to her is a large billboard proclaiming, “Turn right at the Bow Flyover”, while a bank sign is visible in the background. These commercial signs speak of a changing city, yet they seem disconnected from the woman herself. The advertisements represent movement, development, and consumer culture, whereas she embodies continuity and everyday survival.
I think she humanises a generation of East End residents who had lived through war, post-war austerity, and the profound social changes that reshaped the area during the twentieth century. She’s actually walking past a former derelict bomb sight hidden by billboards. Although she occupies only a small part of the photograph, she’s undoubtedly its emotional centre.
The buildings, signs, and street furniture suggest the physical city, while the woman represents the lived experience of those who inhabit it. Her presence is fleeting as she is simply passing through the frame. Nevertheless she carries the history of the East End in a way that the architecture alone cannot.
This photomontage combines two photographs taken on Brick Lane. The image of the woman was captured as she walked past the Seven Stars pub in the 1980s, while the background photograph was taken on a rain-soaked evening in 2003.
I wanted to create a strong visual contrast between permanence and change, using photographic techniques to explore Brick Lane as a place shaped by history, migration, and continual urban transformation.
The blurred background was created using a slow shutter speed combined with intentional camera movement. It conveys a sense of energy, motion, and instability. Streaks of neon light sweep across the frame, evoking nightlife, commerce, and the constant flow of visitors—qualities closely associated with Brick Lane’s identity as a destination for restaurants, bars, and tourism. In contrast, the woman remains relatively sharp and still. Her presence provides a visual anchor within the swirling environment, suggesting resilience and continuity amid relentless change. I wanted her to appear as a figure from another era inhabiting a contemporary, fast-moving city.
The photomontage reflects on Brick Lane’s evolving identity, juxtaposing tradition with modernity, permanence with movement, and individual experience with the spectacle of urban life. Rather than simply documenting the street, the image invites viewers to consider how places evolve over time and how those changes affect the people who have long called them home.
