- 01 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | A pavement level display in the Central Library (2010)
These photographs were made largely on exploratory walks without any particular subject intent between 2007 and 2018. Their sequence links pairs through some common factor in their composition. As a reader this is the third library building I’ve used in this location, the first being a fine if soot-stained classical stone building from the 19C. It was followed by a glowering concrete 1960’s bunker by Basil Spence demolished in 2007 but the third is light and spacious. This image was a detail from an early and temporary exhibition fronting the pavement but I can’t recall its subject.
- 02 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Window detail from the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (2014)
Originally an industrial building completed in the 1950s as a grain store and flour mill it was repurposed and opened for art exhibitions in July 2002. It’s a large and tall box structure echoing a castle keep in profile. This is a section from the full height glazing frame inserted into its western façade. The added colour abstraction related to an exhibition in the 2014 programme, again forgotten
- 03 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | City centre bookshop detail (2018)
A narrow street angles its way around buildings including this glazed corner of a bookshop brightly lit at three in the afternoon of a January day. The interior architectural details, book displays, reflections of adjacent buildings and views through to others standing across another street created, for me, this compelling collage.
- 04 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS ! A quayside restaurant window still life with building reflections (2014)
The formality of this composition was an immediate attraction but looking at it now I’m not entirely sure as to what’s actual and what’s reflected.
- 05 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | BALTIC arts café lettering display (2007)
The quayside base of the BALTIC building is below the street on the landward side. What started as an exploration of a lettering display in the entrance way café led to a more detailed exploration of the lower façade. The three o’clock light on November 29 was striking directly into the space, enhancing the reds, creating dense shadows and muting the colours of the background architectural reflections. I might be one of the seeming figures on the image’s lower edge.
- 06 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Lettering and torn poster near the Ouseburn (2011)
This fragment of a streetside wall under Byker Bridge had long attracted posters and graffiti of which this is one fleeting record.
- 07 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | A creative closure on a derelict Ouseburn house (October 2012)
This is a detail from a pair of small houses on an Ouseburn street. Once a busy industrial area with tidal quays serving a great variety of trades and industries interspersed with worker housing it’s undergone a rebirth in recent times. “Ouseburn is widely considered the creative and cultural quarter of Newcastle…….” (Ouseburn Trust). The restoration of this once derelict pair is long complete but in its early stages had other art works masking window openings fitted for protecting and advertising its changing fortunes.
- 08 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | A derelict building on the Ouseburn (August 2012)
Many buildings have been repurposed rather than replaced but on my last visit a couple of years ago little had changed on this one. Its vegetation was more extensive, new housing had been built on derelict post-demolition sites downriver and small boats were moored at the quays. Their access to the Ouseburn was originally controlled by the tides on the Tyne but a lift barrier can now adjusts water levels.
- 09 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Parked motorbike detail with crash helmet (2015)
One of several photographs made on the quayside north end of the Millennium Bridge. Stylish and immaculate, this was a fascinating ornament to the street view.
- 10 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Racing power boats on the Tyne moored at the quay (2014)
The powerboat racing circuit lay between the Tyne and Millennium Bridges. The peat water colour was a combination of high tide and floodwater after recent rainfall in the westerly hills. The pristine craft and their colour graphics seemed an appropriate pairing with the motorbike in the previous image.
- 11 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | A window detail on the former Co-operative department store (2008)
The 1932 Art Deco Co-operative Department store in Newcastle was designed by Leonard Ekins and completed in 1932. It closed in 2011 and is now an hotel with retail businesses on the ground floor. In its final Co-op years to 2011 it remained in use as a food hall. This image shows uncertain street reflections in the window glass backed by giant and brightly coloured images of fruit and vegetables printed on to plastic film.
- 12 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Etched and stained glass window details, with reflections (2014)
This from outside a pub records a foreground fragment of decorative etched glass against the leading and coloured glass in a window across the room. Reflections of the stonework on a railway viaduct standing across the street behind the camera provide a ghostly ‘interior’ image.
- 13 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Window with shadows brightness January sun (2018)
The sunlight’s direction at three on a January afternoon was almost at right angles to this Quayside pub building’s façade. What I recorded was at face level and could hardly be missed; “right place, right time” must come to mind. I made a slight adjustment to the contrast and cropped the image to echo the stonework window outline more closely.
- 14 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Sunlight, red blinds, beech leaves and portrait fragments (2018)
At one o’clock on the same day on the other side of the city centre the strong reds of the blinds in this café window attracted attention. I don’t like being photographed and almost always avoid including people in images. Here, the angle between lens and window and the narrow framing between blind and sill seemed a just acceptable compromise on the second.
- 15 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Abstract detailing from the Centre for Life building (2008)
The Centre for Life building was completed in 2000. In style it stands in great contrast to its classical Central Station neighbour of 1840 designed by John Dobson, a native of Newcastle and a great influence on its architecture from that period. The Centre was designed by fellow Novacastrian Terry Farrell and concentrates on Life Sciences. Corrugated metal cladding on its curving south façade carries strongly coloured projecting panels abstracted here in alignment.
- 16 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Reflections in the River Tyne from the Millennium Bridge (2014)
The forms and colours of the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art building as reflected in the animated surface of the River Tyne.
- 17 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | Tulips in yellows and reds (2016)
This photograph records tulips in flower beds by the entrance to the Hatton Gallery at Newcastle University, their variations in yellow and red echoed by the petrol station in the final image of this set.
- 18 NEWCASTLE FRAGMENTS | A Shell petrol station detail from Byker near the Ouseburn (2014)
Part of the appeal of this composition lay with its underlying squared geometry and the contrasting curvatures to of the fabric banner’s edge.