Looking for some old slides I came across this Leeds street scene from the early 1970s. It’s the sort of everyday view that it would never normally occur to me to photograph. Martin Salisbury, one of our tutors in graphic design at Leeds Polytechnic, suggested that I should go out and photograph the city to bring a bit of contrast to a project on prehistoric Yorkshire that I was working on.
The streets that I walked through are already part of history and I wish that I’d taken more shots.
When I see archive film of events such as the miners strike of 1974 (there was another ten years later) it’s hard to believe that the environment looked so monochromatic and dismal.
Today television dramas set this period are usually shot in low key colour. My Agfa Gavaert colour slides show that that’s not artistic license; it really was like that.
It’s so long ago that even the minis were half-timbered. In every photograph that I’ve looked at so far, all the vehicles that I can identify are British-made. Those look like Rovers in the background.
And would you believe that there are no parking restrictions so near the centre of the Leeds?!