colourflex: a wool mill since pre-1850, Rawdon Low Mill was a dyeing and twisting mill for Colourflex. Largely demolished in 2014, the original mill has been developed for housing.
colourflex: entrance shed
colourflex: overstream office
colourflex: hand graffiti floor
eastmoor: reformatory, borstal, approved school, at various times home to students and the most disturbed children - Eastmoor is decaying by the day, overtaken by plant-life and vandals, fire and mould.
eastmoor: attic floor
eastmoor: mould wall
eastmoor: interior window wall
murphy's: abandoned in the late 1970s and decaying rapidly, Murphy's Machine Works at Menston supplied bespoke machinery to the tanning industry, and built rag cutting and cable stripping equipment.
murphy: northwall ghosts
murphy: eastwall gate
murphy: southwall
murphy: punchout set
murphy: workbench
repeater station: built originally for the growing telephone industry, the 1930s Repeater Station building in Catterick had later functioned as a paint factory before being restored from a state of decay soon after the turn of the millennium.
repeater station: paint floor
repeater station: paint mixer detail 1
repeater station: paint mix pit
repeater station: paint mixer detail 2
repeater station: bathroom pipework
temple works: revolutionary flax mill, headquarters of Kays Catalogues, controversial art and performance space - Temple Works is a unique and historic building that has been allowed to founder to a point almost beyond economic recovery. Mould and decay, neglect and collapse, blur an architectural masterpiece (but now saved to become British Library North).
temple works: red ladder yellow columns
temple works: clock & steel
temple works: column ‘flare'
temple works: south-west corner
temple works: two columns
temple works: south wall east bay
temple works: south wall mid bay bright
temple works: painters bar floor
dereliction: about the work
Having concentrated on landscape photography for most of my working life I discovered interior architectural ‘landscapes’ about 10 years ago. Like most photographers I am fascinated by liminal spaces – boundaries between shadows and light - dusk and dawn, foreshores between sea and land. Yet man made architecture – derelict factories, abandoned houses, ancient farms, sea defences, places in the process of being reclaimed by nature – are also spaces in transition – neither one thing nor the other – liminal!
A look at my images here will show that I have worked extensively in most of these transitional environments. Most recently I worked as ‘photographer in residence’ at Temple Works, a Grade 1 listed 1835 flax mill now mostly abandoned and awaiting recovery.
With this work I look for natural ‘borderlines’ - pipes, wiring, conduits, girders, corners - and internal features selected for their compositional purity. No colour is added to any of my images in post-production - the natural colours are revealed with the use of vibrance and saturation tools without any hue shifting. All of the images are very large - up to 900 megapixels after stitching and processing.