Monday 2 August 2010

“In memory of…”

Why do I take photographs… why do I put myself through the mental torture… because I get to go where others can’t, talk to people who I’d never get to meet without a camera in my hand and get to indulge my curiosity…

So there I was standing in a “tin hut” with a stillness and a quiet calm that defied understanding… not that it looked much from the outside, but this tin hut had a story to tell.

Apparently it originally lived on a shipyard on the banks of the Tyne, a mission chapel and a social club for the workers. When it’s days there were over it was dismantled and rebuilt in a suburb of a small North East town, as a church and community centre.

The walls were still lined with horsehair insulation, beneath the “modern” tin panels… perhaps that’s what made it so still and calm inside, amidst the memories of countless church services, children’s excited laughter, Saturday afternoon jumble sales…

But for a few short hours I had the small hall all to myself, just me, a camera, a tripod and the still silence… oh and the bright, but cloudy sky that through those windows gave a glorious simple light that seemed to match the mood…