Urban 1

At about the time I began to feel that Landscape as God was something of a well-worn cliché, I realised how much I enjoyed the sensual quality that was becoming possible with colour negative. I found myself taking more and more pictures in urban settings. Prompted by the work of Americans such as Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and William Eggleston, I became interested in exploring urban environments of one kind or another.

The only problem being of course that it's much easier to sell Landscape as God than the interior of a motor mechanic's workshop, however colourful that might be.

As luck would have it, this new-found interest in things urban was helped by my getting a grant to photograph some of the remaining textile mills in West Yorkshire. This was an institutional project, and unfortunately, like many of these things, a series of management shifts meant that the second part of the project - the exhibition element - was never funded.