Blackpool Confidential

This is a collection of photographs taken in Blackpool between 1997-2000, when I was studying photography at Blackpool & the Fylde College on Palatine Road.

These pictures are  Blackpool before the smoking ban in pubs  and the era of cheap supermarket booze  - both of which had a remarkable effect on the culture and architecture of the town, probably changing it more in ten years than it had in the last hundred.  

These were also the days before digital and shooting a fifty frames of the same thing, before staring into the back of camera whilst the action passed you by. The cost of film generally meant I shot two or three frames before moving on.

Towards the end of my time in Blackpool the night-time culture of the  town seemed to change. Less boozy and more druggy, with all the associated problems that come with that. The town seemed to go from raucously cheerful to dark and dangerous  - or maybe that was just my imagination.

After I graduated I gathered up all my work and packed it away where it has languished largely untouched for the best part of 15 years. 

Practically everything here was shot on 35mm Fuji Velvia 50 iso transparency film and it seems to have survived remarkably well - a cardboard print box in a drawer being the ideal archive conditions apparently. I wonder if the same could be said of digital in the future?      

Some of the places and people seen here are no longer with us. A lot of the art-deco buildings which grew up in Blackpool's heyday have been replaced by the unimaginative supermarketicture which has come to dominate the landscape of the UK.  

Not all the photos here are great, but banality plus time can sometimes equate to significance, so that's my excuse in adding another pile of pixels to the great dustbin of history which is the Internet.

Thanks for viewing!