This is my Dad, Franciszek and his fiance Lucy. During the summer of 2009, I took a trip back up North to Manchester to visit friends and then across the M62 to the promise land; Holmfirth to catch up with my family. My Dad came up with a most fantastic idea. We drove around to every house he'd ever lived in and I then took photos. I then comlied them on an A1 sheet, like a diagramatic map of personal history in order, and thus framed it and gave it to him for Christmas. There are some incredible examples of Northern domestic Architecure; weavers cottages etc and post war housing in Huddersfield, all within the gem of the most sensational scenery. The majority are in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire a small town in a valley in the Pennines where I grew up. A truly unique place with a one-off culture lost in time. A mind of its own, very difficult to describe to people here in London. You walk around the place , and amongst forrests, views, liberty caps, working mens clubs and true northern industrial heritage one can not tell what year it is at all. You go in a pub and its the 60's, then up to the park and there's kids on E's with 'Experience' on a geto blaster - is it 1988? then grab a taxi to the hills and you get picked up in an Australian outback landrover; open top, safari seats on the front and a rifle on the back......this experience continues. Anyway, photographs of my dads houses, a visual demonstration of Northern Working class housing from 1700 to present day.
Here's a pick of the best. Freinds of mine on facebook can see all of these + the compilation in my 'photographs of m62 culture' and 'object monument beauty: avante garde northern oxygen' albums
