The Representation of the Northern City in the Photography of John Davies (1981–2003)

Abstract

John Davies began making ‘landscape photographs’ of cities in the early 1980s. A period of prolonged visual and documentary research on Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle, began at a time when these cities were experiencing a deep economic recession brought about by the progressive dismantling of their historic industrial activities. This economic decline was further aggravated by a hostile political, economic and social climate in the 1980s following the election of Margaret Thatcher. Signs of the post-industrial regeneration process multiplied as cities endeavoured to reconstruct their images and identities. This essay looks at how the photography of John Davies has engaged with changes in the northern post-industrial city in the past three decades. It considers the ways in which his pictures reveal the city as a palimpsest: a narrative constantly written over. It examines how the work performs as both a document and an aesthetic commentary on the changes in the urban fabric, functioning as a metonymic image of the socio-political and economic transformations witnessed in the wider north of England. It ultimately underlines the capacity of the work to articulate historical awareness. The attention to history is explored within specific pictures, underlining their capacity to depict urban landscapes as specific process-based outcomes. In considering the indexicality of images within the body of the work, the essay also outlines the historical discourse that arises from visual intersections.