Liverpool : 1972 – 2025 Volume 1
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Childhood Amid Urban Decay: Toxteth 1980
This photograph of children playing among derelict houses in Toxteth in 1980 is striking because it captures both the physical deterioration of Liverpool 8 and the continuing vitality of the community that lived there. The boys are not passive victims of poverty; they have appropriated an abandoned urban landscape and turned it into a place for play and adventure. At the same time, the ruined houses behind them provide powerful evidence of the economic and social pressures facing the area.
When I took the photograph, I was reminded of my own childhood and the hours of adventure I spent with friends exploring abandoned buildings and playing on bomb sites in Coventry. There was something exciting about these forbidden and half-forgotten spaces. Perhaps that is part of what drew me to this scene in Toxteth: despite the obvious poverty and decay, the boys appear to have found their own world of adventure among the ruins.
The photograph captures a striking contrast between childhood and dereliction. The boys are engaged in what looks like ordinary play, yet the environment around them is anything but ordinary. Broken walls, empty houses and exposed brickwork suggest a neighbourhood undergoing demolition and clearance. Houses that had once provided homes for working-class families had become unsafe, unwanted or simply abandoned.
Liverpool had suffered a long-term decline in its traditional economic base, particularly in shipping, the docks and manufacturing. During the 1970s these problems intensified, with unemployment rising and large numbers of people leaving the inner city. Research into Liverpool’s decline records that more than 100,000 people left the city during the 1971–81 decade, through a combination of slum clearance, rehousing and the search for employment elsewhere. (Springer)
The empty terraces therefore tell a story about the destruction of an urban community as much as the destruction of buildings. These houses were not simply structures; they were homes, and their disappearance disrupted established networks of neighbours, families and local businesses. Historic England’s later work on the Welsh Streets in Liverpool 8 illustrates the scale and persistence of the problem: hundreds of Victorian terraced houses eventually became vacant and derelict, demonstrating the depth of the housing crisis in this part of the city. (Historic England)
By 1980, Britain was entering a severe recession, while Liverpool was experiencing the consequences of deindustrialisation particularly intensely. Traditional employment in the docks, manufacturing and associated industries was contracting. For communities already facing economic disadvantage, there were increasingly few alternatives.
The scale of unemployment around Toxteth was enormous. The Scarman Report, which examined the disturbances that followed in 1981, recorded that unemployment registered at the nearby Leece Street employment office had remained at around 17,000–18,000 between 1976 and 1980. In the year to June 1981, it rose by roughly another 3,000, reaching more than 21,000. The report also drew attention to the particular impact of unemployment on young people, including young Black people.
The boys in this photograph belonged to a generation growing up in an environment where the transition from school to secure employment was becoming increasingly uncertain. Their apparently carefree play therefore takes place against a much more troubling economic background.
Yet I think it is important not to view the photograph simply as a document of poverty. What interests me is the way the children have taken possession of this neglected space. The adults may have seen abandoned houses, demolition and decay; the boys appear to have seen possibilities. Their presence brings life into a landscape that otherwise looks empty.
There is also an added poignancy in knowing what was to happen in Toxteth the following year. In 1981 the area became the focus of major civil disturbances, following years of unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination and increasingly strained relations between sections of the community and the police. None of that is directly visible in this photograph, and I would not want to suggest that the image somehow predicts what happened. But, viewed with hindsight, the derelict houses and the circumstances in which these children were growing up form part of the wider social and economic landscape of the time.
For me, the central significance of the photograph lies in this juxtaposition of childhood vitality and urban abandonment. The boys are surrounded by the physical consequences of Liverpool’s economic crisis, but they are also evidence that Toxteth was a living community rather than simply the “derelict” or “problem” area that much contemporary media portrayed it as.
Perhaps that is what I remember most strongly about making photographs like this. Amid the decay, there was still life: children playing, people talking, families carrying on with their everyday lives. The buildings might have been falling apart, but the community had not disappeared.
Exploring Solitude and Technology on Liverpool’s 79 Bus
I took this photograph of my good friend Paul sitting on the 79 Liverpool bus, absorbed in his phone. His concentration on the phone creates a remarkably private moment within a public space. As a street photographer years ago I might once have photographed someone reading a newspaper, a book, or looking out of a bus window.
The bus is moving through Liverpool, but Paul is stationary within it. The outside world is reduced to indistinct shapes and reflections through the windows.
Meanwhile, the phone contains an entirely different temporal world of messages, news, social media, information and photographs.
So three forms of time coexist: the physical journey of the bus, the immediate moment of the photograph and the digital world inside the phone. Paul is physically surrounded by other people and the architecture of public transport, but psychologically he appears somewhere else. The bright rectangle of the phone becomes a little window into another world. So my photograph of Paul sitting on a bus looking at his phone is perhaps a meditation on age, technology, solitude, public space and everyday urban life.
Paul would probably say “No Phil it’s just a photo of me on the bus!”
Exploring Venice: Beyond the Tourist Experience
The white uniform and large chef’s hat contrast strongly with the darker doorway and surrounding brickwork in this composition. The chef acts almost as a bridge between the viewer and the street beyond. His uniform suggests cleanliness, professionalism and the traditions of the restaurant industry, while the surrounding buildings show the age of the city. I would imagine that many restaurant workers have occupied the same spot over time.
UNESCO describes Venice as a city founded in the 5th century on 118 islands, which developed into a major maritime power from the 10th century onwards. Its extraordinary historic urban structure has survived remarkably well, with the layout of its streets and buildings retaining much of its medieval and Renaissance character.
The architecture in the photograph reflects this history. The narrow street, tightly packed buildings, exposed brick and small doorways are characteristic of Venice’s historic urban environment. Here I’ve photographed a narrow calle used by local people. I’m showing the working city behind the tourist city.
Venice has an exceptionally long history as a centre of trade, commerce, craftsmanship and food culture. During the height of the Venetian Republic, the city was one of the most important commercial powers in Europe, connecting markets across the Mediterranean and further east. Its position between East and West contributed to the development of a distinctive and cosmopolitan culture.
By 2006, Venice was experiencing a major transformation. Tourism had become enormously important to the city’s economy. Contemporary reporting in 2006 estimated that around 15–18 million tourists had visited Venice during the preceding year. At the same time, the resident population of the historic centre had fallen dramatically, from a peak of about 171,000 in 1951 to fewer than 62,000 by 2006.
Taken in 2006, the image is particularly significant because Venice was already facing the consequences of mass tourism and declining numbers of permanent residents. The narrow back street becomes almost symbolic: behind the spectacular Venice presented to tourists is another Venice of workers, restaurants, homes and everyday routines.
Perhaps this photograph is not simply a portrait of a chef. It is a record of a city in transition — a place where an exceptionally ancient urban environment was increasingly being reshaped by the demands of the modern tourist economy.
Whenever I look back at the photographs I made of Venice at this time I always think of what I could have photographed but didn’t. I’m looking forward to returning!
Elisabeth Bridge: A 1960s Engineering Marvel in Budapest
I photographed this impressive bridge over the Danube in Budapest, in 2003. It was designed by engineer Pál Sávoly and opened in 1964.
I liked the wonderful contrast between the scale of the engineering and the two tiny pedestrians. They appear almost as silhouettes behind the railing, providing the human scale that tells us just how massive the structure is. The soft, grainy texture of the sky contrasts with the hard, repetitive geometry of the bridge.
As German forces retreated from Budapest at the end of the Second World War, the city’s Danube bridges were destroyed. Erzsébet Bridge was badly damaged, and unlike the other major pre-war bridges, it was not reconstructed in its original form. Instead of recreating the ornate 1903 structure, post-war Hungary chose a thoroughly modern bridge. Construction began in 1961, and the new bridge opened on 21 November 1964. It retained the approximate location and basic suspension principle of its predecessor, but otherwise represented a new technological and aesthetic era.
So the bridge in this photograph photograph is, in a sense, a 1960s vision of the future, photographed forty years later.
Exploring Budapest’s Underground & Graffiti
Whenever I visit a city for the first time I’m always looking for something unusual to photograph; here in Budapest I’m working from the level of the pedestrian rather than the tourist: not the grand Budapest of the Danube and historic façades, but the transitional, slightly rough spaces underneath it. I’ve always been fascinated by the lighting of underground spaces and there atmospheric effects.
The photograph is deliberately off-kilter. The horizon isn’t horizontal; the whole passage seems to lean. That gives an ordinary pedestrian tunnel a surprisingly unstable, almost cinematic quality.
The large figure in the middle (my partner Hazuan Hashim) is the anchor. He’s walking away from us and almost swallowed by the tunnel. Then, right at the far end, another tiny figure is visible. The eye naturally follows the first person toward the second.
The graffiti is a crucial part of the composition. It isn’t simply background decoration; it reveals a lot about the character of the city. The subway can be imagined as a lighted gallery for ever changing graffiti. Importantly it’s a gallery without gatekeepers.
The walls are covered with layers of tags and larger pieces, some apparently painted over and repainted. In black and white they become almost as important as the architecture. There’s a particularly interesting contrast and tension between the formal repetition of the tunnel—the windows, lights, concrete panels—and the uncontrolled marks of the graffiti.
It’s almost a collision between two kinds of urban language:
- the city authority: concrete, lighting, circulation, numbered/marked panels;
- the individual: names, tags, drawings and territorial marks.
And the two are literally occupying the same surface.
There is historical substance behind that. Budapest’s metro infrastructure became an important part of the city’s graffiti culture during the 1990s. One account of Budapest’s M3 graffiti scene records work appearing at the Fehér úti depot in 1994 and subsequently at the K?ér Street depot; some work by the graffiti artist known as “Dise” survived until 2003.
It was cold and wet when we visited Budapest in 2003 and there was melting snow outside the subway. It’s really a memory of being in that city. I’ve visited it many times since. Budapest is a place that draws you back because there’s always something new to see and experience.
