MA Week 17 - Generative wandering : in search of the North

Generative Wandering as a research method– in search of the North 

I’ve been working with some existing images of trees for a while, just because they are nice images, but really they are not saying what’s inside, which is more gritty and less pretty than trees (though I do love trees. I think they are wildly underrated). Challenged by my tutor, I said I would go out and take some photos to generate some more visual source material, so she told me I should submit them if I did. Bluff called, I decided I would walk to Armley, a district of the city that borders the city centre, where I knew I would find railways to photograph if nothing else. 

 

Armley from Woodhouse

I walked from college in Woodhouse to Armley and it was 1 ½ hours mightily well spent. What started off as a targeted wandering to find images that match my childhood view of Northernness became slightly personal and introspective. I stopped for a moment as I passed the street where I was born. I feel nothing for the street yet I am repeatedly drawn to this part of Leeds.  

Trouble at t' Mill

 

Cobbled streets, graffiti, all kinds of architecture; Victorian villas, Georgian façade, high rise flats and a nice bit of brutalism, all with the backdrop of the skyscrapers of the city centre. A massively unexpected find was the canal towpath and a re-purposed mill, right next to the Inner Ring Road flyover. To be honest I was circumspect about being on the towpath as, yes, there were joggers and workers, but also a couple of people near whom I didn’t want to loiter. I clutched my bag tightly. Shame. But a mill? What could be more Northern?? 

Electrifying

Moving on I climbed up next to the railway. There was a bridge with fairly open sides so I couldn’t cross it (I have some kind of open bridge phobia – if I can see the road below I panic). That was a pity. However I could walk up Armley Road and photograph the railway in the cutting, near the Adult Store (yes!).  

Daughters of Albion

 

There is a light industrial estate there, Albion Park. The Albion itself is now an office for a security firm but its red glazed tiles and ornate picture of a warrior give away its origins. My Dad’s workmates used to make the first purchases from their wage packets in there on a Friday. The Engineering Shop where he worked is long gone, although I don’t know when it was pulled down – he was finished in the early 80s after 30-odd years with the same firm. A poignant moment, to walk where he had, in a place that was his but not mine.  

There were some factories, though, nice and Northern, one still in use and another looking rather derelict. Walking back down Armley Road (clutching bag again as I spied a couple of Diamond White drinkers), I took a bridge-free detour to cross the inner ring road.  This yielded some more gritty buildings to photograph and also the opportunity to get right next to the railway and a good view of a signal gantry with lovely geometric shapes. Then my final destination (and I braved my bridge phobia – just!). The gasometer next to the gyratory. It’s painted pale blue and the rust is just the right shade of complimentary orange to offset it perfectly. 

Paradise by the Gasboard Light

So… did I find my view of Northerness? Yes, there were glimpses. I suppose any part of the country has gasometers (Leeds evidently has five) and electrified railways and adult stores. But the mill is definitely Northern, and the factories gave me a feeling of industry and purpose and dirt and making. I found more memories, too, not that I was looking for them.  

Overall, though, the whole experience of wandering in a part of Leeds that I’ve not explored before (although I’ve driven on those roads many times) was exhilarating in a way I didn’t expect. It was a kind of industry of my own, this search for industry. I “made” some photographs and generated lots of further ideas for making from the visual material, and also from the experience (the lived experience, I guess) of being in those places. There really was a feeling of research about it, somehow; researching visually by looking, and researching by choosing where to walk and thereby forming links between those places. Researching by half-thought out imagined narratives for the builders and decorators in their name-bearing white vans on the gyratory on their way home/to the pub/ to the take-away on a Friday afternoon. Researching by letting myself try to understand this place, what goes on there, what used to go on there. I was weary but buzzing by the time I eventually got home.