Gallery 3: From The Archive: Graffiti
'WRITING'S ON THE WALL' As once-notorious Manchester housing estate Hulme was earmarked for demolition, with increasing numbers of tenants moving out & drug addicts moving in; hidden amongst soon-to-be derelict properties the creation of hip-hop style graffiti pieces. Creeping out from no-go subways onto garage doors, dark underpass & shop shutters across the estate. I began to document their sudden overnight appearances with my Pentax K-1000 + colour transparency film. This was autumn 1993Eventually I got to know these anonymous local graf-writers & tried to photograph whenever they painted. As the estate slowly but surely disappeared their Hall of Fame came & went with it, attracting (& inviting themselves) graffiti artists from further afield. First Hulme Graffiti Jam took place in Woodcock Square, April '95. When young writer Craig Smear Todd died suddenly his 'tag' gave the event a name. There were more SMEAR JAMs to follow. In the inclusive spirit of the time graff-writers were joined by break-dancers, travellers, punks, ravers, deejays, people from the local community
I shot these events mainly on B&W 35mm film & returned later to document finished pieces with colour slide film. A body of work emerged from which I put together my first exhibition FIX, and my first paid & published article for Level Magazine. Offers came in to shoot more graffiti but as a photographer I wanted to move on to something else
Looking at these images today, I see now that they are not only part of an emergent hip-hop culture but also intimately tied to both time & place. If you read graffiti as a response to urban alienation then the noise of the exploding syntax (recorded here first on walls then film) grew exponentially louder as Hulme, (failed social-living experiment for a whole generation), was compulsory-purchased, condemned & bulldozed flat (Again!) for the second time in less than 30 years!
For contextual background on Hulme housing estate watch this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1qpf9hogI0&feature=related) short edit from ITV 'World In Action' documentary No Place Like Hulme (Granada TV. 1978)
Most of the images shown here will never have been seen before. Prints of all photographs are available to order
Much much more more to follow
Much much more more to follow
 1993 |  1994 |  1994 |
 1995 |  1995 SMEAR JAM |  1995 |
 1996SMEAR2 |  1996 | Coming Soon! SMEAR3 |
| Coming Soon! edinburgh oct'96 | Coming Soon! wakefield nov'96 |  2011 |
