January 25th – This had turned into Lloyd Cole’s lost weekend. Little was going right and I’d spent hours trying to battle with technology, and achieved little.
I escaped in the evening, into a desolate, somnambulant Brownhills, and cruised around the town centre happily lost in my search for a picture.
Sometimes, it’s good just to put the stuff down, get on the bike, start pedalling and stop thinking.
October 19th- a busy, fraught and not terribly productive day, I spun out past teatime into a dark, deserted and somnambulant town. I had the little tripod, and I welcomed the darkness back into my life.
I spun up the High Street, over Anchor Bridge, and back down the canal, and didn’t see a soul; there was life on the narrowboats, as the chimneys were gently smoking, yet there were no other signs of life at all.
I love the new LED floodlights on Silver Court – and Anchor Bridge will always be a muse.
Time to embrace the blackness again…
July 20th – Out all day, and back home late I slipped out for a takeaway. Circling Brownhills in the dark, I had a play with the settings on the camera. Tilt-shift long exposure at night is an interesting effect – not sure it worked too well, but I think it bears further exploration.
In the summer, it’s a surprise to remember how dramatic even the most mundane bits of Brownhills can be at night.
February 8th – At the other end of the architectural spectrum is Silver Court. An odd, split level building, it’s one of the last untouched remnants of sixties-era Wimpey system construction that were so ubiquitous here, although this isn’t a full system build. At the lowest level are garages, at the rear; split level, above are a parade of shops. Split level again, at the rear, there’s an access pathway over the garage roofs to maisonette-style houses above the shops. It’s one of the oddest, most quirky designs I’ve ever seen, and in many ways is deserves recording as an exemplar of what happened when system build was expanded beyond it’s narrow confines. On the other hand, it’s harsh, dark and badly constructed.
On a damp winter’s night, the sodium lighting, hard suffices and dark corners make for very atmospheric photos.
October 21st – Work was heavy today, and didn’t escape until the evening. Brownhills is very desolate at night, yet I kind of love it more like that. The shutters, sodium light and hard surfaces are very atmospheric. Silver Court fascinates me at night – this 1960’s promenade of shops and maisonettes is crumbling and needs renovation, and is one of the last remnants of the system building fad of the period. Once bustling, it’s now largely empty, even in the daytime. The driveway at the back would once have been overshadowed by the noise and bustle of the five tenements of Silver Court Gardens, but is now surrounded by an eerily quiet wasteland. Much of what ails Brownhills is concentrated here – failed town planning and lost community.
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