Photos 2021

The year started with positive post-pandemic intentions which nevertheless soon became bogged down in a murky urban swamp, a reminder of the inevitable rise and fall of all things over time...

From the decaying 19th century mansions of Whalley Range and Victoria Park... those beautiful monuments to the craziest of Cottonopolis times... to the reinvention of Hulme (as it swallows up parts of Moss Side) and Deansgate Square's shining towers, Manchester is a fast-changing patchwork of the established, the crumbling and the upwardly-mobile, neighbourhoods in transition, wondering what they have in common with each other...

By the way, can you tell me how far it is from Miles Platting to New Islington?... About 50 years perhaps?

Such situations can benefit from a change of perspective... get out of town, take a look at the city from the surrounding hillsides, where time moves more slowly... head for the desolate borderlands to the east and north of Manchester, where Cheshire and Lancashire meet with Derbyshire and West Yorkshire in a wilderness both bleak and beautiful, empty yet dramatic... then push on further across the moors, beyond the reservoirs... follow the rivers and streams back to their source, deeper into more rugged terrain, far away from modern life...