Sheffield ’24

It’s fitting that as my passion for photography re-awakens I find myself visiting Sheffield again – a place I came to forty three years ago, as an enthusiastic young photographer. I was visiting my sister at Uni and between concerts and pubs I spent time wandering around the City with camera in hand (35mm film then of course). The streets have changed a lot since then, but I guess so have I. The scars of austerity measures and the decline of high street shopping are everywhere. But these are slowly becoming the new normal. And they’ll probably remain until we figure out how community and shared urban spaces can revive each other. It’d be wrong though to suggest that what I saw is any worse than Exeter, where I travelled from, or any other city centre in Britain. People still rush here and there to work or study, smiling and chatting, buying coffees, whilst the clatter of diggers and whir of cranes goes about reshaping the abandoned spaces. Concrete, steel and glass gradually healing over the wounds. Whether a corporate, profit driven global culture is what the country’s living spaces really needs though remains to be seen.