My original idea for Assignment 4, before the
Brighton project was to concentrate on a particular building in Hull; a big
gold box which sums up all that has disappointed me about my hometown over the
past few years. It feels like every day, another beautiful, old, thoughtfully
designed building is being demolished to make way for soulless boxes.
Strangely, my recent trip to Brighton made me realise that this phenomenon is
not unique to Hull. Instead of my usual drive down south, I got the train and
was picked up from the station by my friend. Driving around the back of the
station, I noticed that even the town I’ve always thought of as quirky and
unique is in parts, becoming boxville; now that was a pretty depressing
realisation.
So what is unique about Hull? If I were creating
a tourist brochure, I’d be thinking about promoting its proximity to the coast,
it’s fishing heritage and the ferry port, giving access to Zeebrugge and
Rotterdam. I did think about following Hull’s famous Fish Trail around the city
photographing the city as I went along. But it’s not a tourist brochure, it’s
an intelligent travel publication, aiming to get to the heart of my chosen
city.
My tutor’s words that I may not score well on
creativity on this assignment have rung in my ears to the point where I’m snap
shotting anything and everything in a bid to try and create ideas. A sleepless
night and a lot of advice from the OCA Facebook group made me realise that I
needed to pull back.
A walk around Hull with my husband and without
my camera allowed me to do just that. During one of my wildly snap shotting
moments, I had taken a few photos of the redevelopment going on in the city
centre and had been mulling over one particular image as my opening image.
Concentrating on a different part of the city centre today, my idea started to
grow. I noticed a few things; some which fit with the gold box idea, some that
fit with the redevelopment set - some combined the two.
As we approach 2017, Hull has gone into mad
panic, redeveloping everything from city centre walkways to a complete refurb
on the Hull New Theatre, which won’t actually be complete until 2017 is nearly
over. The Ferens Art Gallery have photographer, Spencer Tunick visiting to
create a piece of work featuring thousands of naked Hull residents and there’s
a buzz of hope in the air that Hull, once known as one of the worst places to
live might just be a place worth visiting after all.
Right now
though, in the opening months of 2016, Hull is not a city of culture, it’s a
city of inconvenience. The entire city centre is a maze of silver and orange
fences, boards creating bridges over dug up walkways; a trip to town now takes
twice the time it should. All over the city, boards tell us that change is
happening, in a weak bid to convince us that it’ll all be worth it. Do we
believe it? Only time will tell.
The most
ironic part of this assignment is that as I photographed the gold box, in a bid
to show what I hated about it, I actually started to like it. It’s made me
realised that maybe you can’t even judge inanimate objects until you’ve really
got to know them…
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