If you go down in the woods today

Your in for a disused mental health hospital. Sat just outside Bristol lies Barrow Gurney hospital, a former mental health unit for Bristol area once branded the dirtiest hospital in the UK after examiners found a trail of errors and failings now shut since 2006. Now it lies overgrown and abandoned subject to a summary execution from the bulldozer in what looks to be an abstract pattern of demolition and failed planning attempts. The remaining wards now stripped of traces and prepped for demolition still leave clues to its past murals painted in the children's wards now draped in police tape from training exercises, and the odd bit of paperwork forgotten marked with notes about health and safety and the latest drug available. They all leave traces of the former for those brave enough to face the stench of the damp and mold, but still complete with the hospital smell from years of cleaning still lingering, clinging on in some hope to keep some sense of past identity in the stripped out wards and corridors.

A victim of the ressession

Spend spend spend was the motto around the start of the 21st century, Then it went wrong the economy failed. The building industry crashed and burnt in a pile of shoddy Barrat box's and high rise designer living sold by a guy in a flash car and suit, and even more flash name designed to fit the nature of the new build flats offering an empty promise of a better life.
What we have here is the victim of the recession, Once a noisy loud and dusty place now silent bar the odd footsteps and muffled voices of the explorer and the odd passing worker to check the site security. This site once produced concrete for the new shopping center in Bristol and various other projects across the south west now it sits awaiting a change in fortunes or the sad embrace of the welders touch and demolition.

RAF graveyard

Deep in the middle of the Cornish countryside lies the former RAF base built during world war two made to protect the western approaches to the UK. This base was to combat the U boat menace, now its left to the firefighting department of RNAS Coldrose for training and used as a dumping ground for air frames no longer required, left to rot in Cornish salt air.

again the scurge of digital photography rears its ugly head

So we moved from an age of grains of silver and hours in a darkroom to an age of pixels and digital file and Photoshop, From the quantifiable tangible nature of the negative to sandisks latest offering of memory containing nothing more than silicon.
Here we have the issue, The image has moved from tangible to an digital world.
So by now some of you are curious as to what does this have to do with the exploration of abandoned buildings and spaces in fact nothing at all to do with it
But what it does effect is my work flow and output rather than the negative and contact sheet and hours spent in the dark room, the images now sit languishing on a hard drive moved about and edited in the digital domain only to be forgotten about.
So what we have here is a series of images of various locations in the UK that for the past few weeks and months have just sat on my hard drive

Enjoy

moment of clarity

Before all the hype and nonsense that UE became in the uk and interforum shite raised its ugly head and people cashing in on this game . There i was climbing the fresh build towers of swansea just to see the view and not look for credit or my cock sucked on a forum or flickr. This is ue pure an simple kids fresh kills this is not, but this one image says a lot to me for my work. Yea i got my degree now, but just a simple brain wave to check some old photobucket account can give you the kick you need to think about your skills in another mindset, to stay away from all this bullshit maybe even put the camera down and sit and pause and take in what this can offer to the human soul rather than this hype fest that UE has become.

yes im drunk and in a philosophical mood tonight after seeing some work from a few years ago.

plymouth shelter

A small ladder leads into a little know part of the dark days of world war 2, this is many of the world war 2 shelters made during the dark days of the blitz to protect the people of Plymouth from the blitz this small hatch cracked and rusting originally an escape route this now gives us access into this world. hardly under ground bar a few feet of soil and concrete hastily made in the start of the war using the cut and cover method a large hole dug filled with a concrete floor and lined with pre made panels and tied together with a series of steel beams then buried to offer some form of protection against the falling bombs this space small and poorly lit offered some shelter from regular raids. During the time in the shelter the former occupants left us clues in the form of small pieces of graffiti drawn in pencil on the wall. This portrait of life in stoke gives us a tangible personal clue to the day to day life of the people of Plymouth during the dark days of world war 2 and adds a historical and personal context to what would just be a series of rooms and chambers without the graffiti.
To enlarge the images click on them

Plymouth navy day 1944


NAFFI





a list of local names and addresses and a possible football score at the bottom



to add a scale and perspective to the graffiti the below images give a context and scale of the shelter.
the shot towards the cubical for the toilets



this would have been lined down one side with benches.

Penallta Colliery

Recently found myself in wales and well it would be rude not to visit what south wales was famous for and no not Tom Jones the coal. Penalta colliery was first shown to me by another local explorer, at the time the site was under renovation the bath house and winding house where both bricked up and tightly guarded following the restoration and site works finishing this enabled access to the bath house and winding house at last.The bath house is a lovely mix of 1920's art deco movement a stunning mix of brick and curves sadly the full splendor of this building purpose its showers have been wrecked by mindless idiots smashing the glazed brick cubicles in domino fashion. still the art deco building even in this state of decay still holds quite a bit of charm. onto the winding house this dates to 1908 when the site was first built, the internals of the winding house are long gone only trace left is 2 large fans to push air down the shafts.the inside of the winding house is made of glazed tile and brick arches sadly my images of this half of the site where not that good a bit more info is here on the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penallta_Colliery
the images where shot on a mamiya 645 with fuji 160s film with a 80mm lens