It always happens that the things I should photograph, things that are about to disappear, I never seem to get round to until they either are no longer there or are already smashed to bits.
As witness these photos of Blackpool's South Shore railway station, the buildings of which, when I arrived with camera in hand in March 1985 are well on the way to nothingness... I could also cite the lack of any colour photos of those stocks on wheels I featured a while ago. Long gone by the time I went looking again with some colour film in my camera.
And yet I regularly take photos of things that don't change over and over again. Take a typical town. People take photos of its grand public buildings, town halls, parks etc. Not so much the shops on the High Street. Particularly not the small shops on the High Street. But they are the things that change. They are the photos you can look back on and come over all nostalgic. Stonehenge looks pretty much the same as it did when I were a lad. The stones I mean not the now elaborate entrance and gift shop. You see? The small shops...
So I have no photos of the South Shore station before its demise. No photos of the wonderful model railway set that resided within. #fail as my Twitter friends would say.
South Shore station today is still in use as Blackpool's second terminus. Just a couple of shelters adorn the platforms. The line that comes to it splits from the main route into Blackpool North at Kirkham and stops at Lytham, St Annes and the Pleasure Beach.
I have fallen into the same trap. What's dull and routine today will be interesting in ten or fifteen years. There's a great photo on flickr of a car park in the mid 1980's full of contemporary bread and butter cars - at the time it would have been of little interest, - today, that photo has generated lots of interest and debate. 'When did you last see one of those'. Now, would you take a random photo of a car park in 2012 ? It goes against the grain, but look back at it in twenty years and it'll be interesting! I enjoy your photos by the way.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Martin! Car parks! Now there's a project! Or even better - car showrooms!
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