Yo. Phibes.
-
@Doctor-Phibes do you know much about Tish Murtha?
-
I hate to admit it, but I've never heard of her. Just looked her up on Wiki, and looks quite interesting, but to answer your question, no.
It looks as though she was in the North East - I was in the North West, but that's not really an excuse.
-
Yeah, what's cool is that despite a handful of great job offers, she went home to document her life there. She lived just as poorly as her subjects as a result.
When she interviewed for her internship, apparently they first asked her, "what kind of work do you want to do?"
She told them, "I want to take pictures of policemen kicking people in the teeth." She got the internship.
The clips of her photos being shared in Parliament are pretty damn interesting.
-
Looking at the photos, quite a lot of them could easily be of areas close to where I grew up.
I only came to realise how rough my home town was when I left - I didn't grow up in a rough bit, and was reasonably off out near the countryside, but when we went into town, we just thought that the poverty was normal.
Then again, we thought that going to play in the grounds of a massive Victorian mental hospital was normal, too.
-
@Doctor-Phibes said in Yo. Phibes.:
Looking at the photos, quite a lot of them could easily be of areas close to where I grew up.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering, if anything looked familiar or if it was too far away.
-
The North East was a bit tougher than the North West in the 70's. We had car factories and military aircraft manufacturing, they'd had ship building and coal, so they got poor first. Liverpool was close by, and very similar to where she photographed, but we never went there as it was pretty scary back then. It's different now. There were areas in Manchester that looked identical to that when I was a student - the best thing that ever happened to Manchester was the IRA bombing that destroyed the city center and forced them to re-build.
-
@Doctor-Phibes said in Yo. Phibes.:
The North East was a bit tougher than the North West in the 70's. We had car factories and military aircraft manufacturing, they'd had ship building and coal, so they got poor first. Liverpool was close by, and very similar to where she photographed, but we never went there as it was pretty scary back then. It's different now. There were areas in Manchester that looked identical to that when I was a student - the best thing that ever happened to Manchester was the IRA bombing that destroyed the city center and forced them to re-build.
Has it changed much since then? That is, did they find something that was able to turn their economy around?
As a comparison, Bethlehem, PA, effectively converted their once-world-leading-but-now-effectively-dead steel and ship industry into one for live entertainment. It saved the town, but there's still an amount of residual poverty.
Not more than 10 miles away is Allentown, which is still very much a shithole.
-
I think the bigger cities are nicer in general. My brother lives in Manchester, and he really likes it. There's quite a bit of cultural stuff going on, and more modern industries. It helps that they have a massive student population - there's about 100,000 in the city, and another 300,000 within an hour's drive.
The town where I grew up seems pretty desolate - it's an old mill town of about 140,000. I used to walk through when I visited my parents, I'd catch the train, then walk through town to the bus station, and every time it seemed a little bleaker. Guys who looked too skinny just aimlessly wandering around. There are streets where we used to go to the pub that are now completely off-limits, everything's closed. The university area is thriving, funnily enough. I went on a pub-crawl with my brother last February, and we transitioned from places that were completely deserted to places heaving with young folks within a couple of streets.
-
Wow, what a good photographer. Really captures the "feel" of the landscape
-
@Aqua-Letifer said in Yo. Phibes.:
Not more than 10 miles away is Allentown, which is still very much a shithole.
I spent 6 months in Allentown in the mid 90s.
-
@jon-nyc said in Yo. Phibes.:
@Aqua-Letifer said in Yo. Phibes.:
Not more than 10 miles away is Allentown, which is still very much a shithole.
I spent 6 months in Allentown in the mid 90s.
Accurate assessment, you think?
I lived in Bethlehem for awhile. Why were you in Allentown?
-
Yes.
We never left the Allentown Hilton, which was across the street from where I worked.
I was consulting for PP&L, believe it or not.
Shortly after or maybe before I did a few months in Harrisburg.