Shadows And Light

Navigation Street Subway, Birmingham, January 2014

This year started pretty well, all things considered.  Fresh from completing my painting ‘Belgrave Gate: Festival Of Lights 1’, and nicely rested after the festive break, I also managed my first serious exhibition visit of the year last week.  The show was ‘Photorealism: 50 Years Of Hyperrealist Painting’ at Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery’s Gas Hall.  It was another excuse to drive over to Brum for the day with my regular travelling companion and fellow Urban Observer, Dave, although, this time, we left the bikes at home in the face of regular downpours and took our cameras out on foot.  I’ll discuss the exhibition properly in the near future but, for now, here’s a flavour of the day generally, and a selection of images harvested as we walked and drove around the City Centre.

Navigation Street Subway, Birmingham, January 2014

Edmund Street, Birmingham, January 2014

Cornwall Street Tower From Edmund Street, Birmingham,
January 2014

Although I made repeat visits to Birmingham last year and have some memories of it from years ago, it still feels like I’ve only scratched the surface really.  Hopefully, once the weather calms down a bit, we’ll resume our two-wheeled expeditions and take advantage of the opportunities they afford to sample a wider tract of the outlying areas.  Dave knows Birmingham better than I, having spent some of his formative years in the region.  Nonetheless, although we didn’t venture far from the environs of Broad Street, Jubilee Square, Paradise Circus, St. Chads Cathedral and Corporation Street, we both commented on how there were still plenty of fresh perspectives to be found on relatively familiar locations.

Queen Street Car Park, Birmingham, January 2014

Swallow Street, Birmingham, January 2014

Reviewing my photos from the day, I find further evidence of last year’s engagement with hazard warning graphics and parking signage.  However, without having embarked with much of a prior agenda, many of my images also arranged themselves into two other main themes.  One might be labeled ‘Illumination and Reflectivity’ and the other, ‘Tunnels’.  The first wasn’t too much of a stretch, given the wet conditions, wintery light levels and short day length.  The second was a consequence of Birmingham’s architectural fabric that, whilst steadily undergoing considerable transformations, still evinces plenty of the heavily planned, post-war Utopian/Dystopian character for which it became a byword.  Primary amongst all this is the exciting way that the main A38 route dives underground through various tunnels as it skirts the urban epicenter, becoming increasingly entangled with higher and ever-denser architecture.

A38 Underpass, Birmingham, January 2014.  (Camera Operator: David Weight)

I’ve already mentioned my current use of a video camera to film through the windscreen as I drive.  My latest variation of this is to capture still images with long exposures using the same camera and this came into its own through the underpasses.  The resulting speed blurs, light trails and random accidents are hardly new ground but the results fascinate me nonetheless and still feel like a valid way to explore the ideas of movement through a city and a dynamic viewpoint.  It was good to have Dave in the passenger seat to handle the shutter work and, as many of the images prove, his timing was spot-on.  You can see Dave's own photography here, here and here.

A38 Underpass, Birmingham, January 2014.  (Camera Operator: David Weight)

Tunnel Beneath Bristol Street, Birmingham, January 2014.
(Camera Operator: David Weight)

That left me free to get lost amongst the tangle of streets and traffic lanes, (something I do with all too-predictable regularity).  My latest random deviation, late in the day, involved veering down an obscure, unmarked and narrow underpass, under Bristol Street and into a netherworld of standing water, discarded rubbish and warnings of restricted access.  Beyond, lay a shadowy commercial tract that felt like exactly the kind of place where one could come to serious grief.  I’m still not convinced it’s an official route and we both had a few seconds of concern here but, to his credit, Dave kept shooting in order to cement our memories of an edgy little moment.  Playing The Haxan Cloak’s darker-than-dark ‘Excavation’ album [1.] at the same time didn’t exactly help, but it was nothing if not appropriate.  In retrospect, I wouldn’t be without these occasional episodes of getting creatively lost amongst hidden backwaters.

Fletchers Walk, Birmingham, January 2014

Paradise Place, Birmingham, January 2014

Paradise Circus Subway, Birmingham, January 2014

This tendency to probe the city’s darker recesses was also a feature of our progress on foot.  We both love the network of underpasses walkways and tunnels around Navigation Street, Fletchers Walk, Paradise Place and the Brutalist concrete maze of the old Library and Civic Complex.  The urgency to capture the character of the latter is exacerbated as, I believe, it is slated for extensive remodeling.  This will probably sweep away a tract of much despised and ‘failed’ urban planning but there’s something bleakly thrilling about the almost post-apocalyptic desolation behind the old Library’s inverted ziggurat.

Old Library Building, Birmingham, January 2014

Old Library Complex, Birmingham, January 2014

Library Theatre Building, Birmingham, January 2014

Old Library Undercroft, Birmingham, January 2014

Ultimately, we found ourselves trespassing into that building’s squalid undercroft amongst ever-deepening shadows and guano-encrusted infrastructure.  Ironically, this forbidding environment actually grew from a period of post war optimism and a vision of egalitarianism, opportunities and benign state intervention, now discarded.  It’s easy to get a vicarious thrill in such territory and, of course, not everyone has the luxury of dropping in and out whilst festooned with expensive photographic equipment.  The spectral, homeless figures who haunt its grimy recesses may appear to have reached the end of the road, but at least they can still find a modicum of shelter and privacy amongst the sodden concrete.  I wonder if their presence will even be tolerated in the face of PR and market imperatives when a bright new environment eventually replaces it?

Alpha Tower, Birmingham, January 2014

We ended our walk after photographing the illuminated environment of Centenary Square.  The new Library Of Birmingham, Hall of Memory and seasonal Ferris wheel provided some much needed light and colour to counterbalance all our shadowy delving underground.

New Library Of Birmingham Basement, Centenary Square, Birmingham, January 2014

Ferris Wheel, Centenary Square, Birmingham, January 2014

New Library Of Birmingham, January 2014

Postscript:

After originally publishing this post I came across this interesting little forum thread.  It obviously refers to the same obscure tunnel under Bristol Street that we blundered into.

[1.]:  The Haxan Cloak, ‘Excavation’, Tri Angle Records, 2013