THE buildings in Simon Sugden’s photographs are derelict and abandoned. Vast Victorian mills, disused hospitals, an empty swimming pool with chipped tiles, grand dance halls and once elegant townhouses choked with weeds and layers of grime.
These places have an eerie stillness and a sense of sadness, yet, bathed in warm light and vivid colours, Simon’s images capture a strange beauty of dereliction - highlighting the way once thriving sites of industry, leisure and domestic life are re-claimed by nature and the elements.
Simon, a member of the Telegraph & Argus Camera Club, has spent 10 years taking photographs of decaying architecture across the UK, including buildings and landmarks in the Bradford district. They include the former funfair at Shipley Glen Tramway, a masonic lodge in Manningham, Drummonds Mill, the Richard Dunn Sports Centre, the grand ballroom at the former High Royds hospital in Menston and an ornate war memorial, flanked by fading icons, at St Mary’s Church in Barkerend.
Simon’s remarkable photographs of ‘lost buildings’ were exhibited at Bradford’s Trapezium Gallery earlier this year, and now they feature in a book, Derelict Britain: Beauty in Decay. With the book’s May release put back, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Simon has teamed up with videographer Lewis Hackett to create a short film of his images, set to a haunting soundtrack by musician Dean McPhee. The powerful film - which takes a journey through long abandoned corridors, staircases, weaving rooms, attics and basements of Bradford’s mills and meeting places and uses striking animation to drain water from the once bustling swimming pool at the Richard Dunn Centre - was made with a grant from Bradford Council’s arts and culture Covid Response fund; supporting local artists and promoting creativity in lockdown.
It’s a poignant film - perhaps even more powerful right now, when so many of Bradford’s buildings are standing empty and un-used due to the current crisis. “I’m used to getting out and about, visiting loads of places and exploring them with my camera. So it’s been difficult in lockdown. I’ve taken to photographing wildlife in my garden,” says Simon, who lives in Riddlesden. “It’s been great to make this film. It’s my stills, all taken in Bradford. Lewis has done a brilliant job with the film-making, it gives you the sense of being inside these places, and Dean’s music is really powerful. I’d like it to be shown on Bradford’s Big Screen, when things get up and running again.”
Ilkley-born Simon bought his first digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera 12 years ago “from a mate in a pub” and taught himself to use it. With a passion for architecture, he set about documenting derelict places before they are lost forever.
He says the places he’s photographed are “past their prime and no longer occupied, with an eerie sense of a forgotten time”.
“I’m inspired by dereliction in architecture - when decay takes over and creates a different kind of beauty,” says Simon, whose freelance work for a building company and for Bradford Council has given him access to buildings usually closed to the public. “I started off going round empty mills in Bradford. It’s fascinating to see them, still standing since the days when the skyline was filled with chimneys. I documented Drummonds Mill for four years, it was an amazing space that employed generations. I found it eerie, I felt a presence there. There was a sense of people at work, smells of industry coming through the wood. ”
His images also capture leisure venues once filled with people, not least Odsal’s Richard Dunn Sports Centre, which closed last year and is due to be demolished, and the projection roomat Bradford’s old Odeon cinema. “I think it’s important to document these places before they go forever,” says Simon, whose photographic work took off in 2015 when he won an award from the National Science and Media Museum’s Inspired By Light photography competition with his spooky image of a scrapyard. “That got me noticed, and I started to get images into magazines, newspapers and on album covers.”
In a foreword to Simon’s book, architect Chris Gaffney writes of the “humanity and respect” he gives the buildings he photographs: “The deterioration and decay of everyday buildings and objects have, in Simon’s vision, a new perfection that can be described as beauty. He captures a second chance for sites that have lost the sparkle gained by the steady bustle of people going about their business or enjoying their hard-earned right to leisure. For Simon there is some form of re-birth that comes from documenting the details he finds”.
* To pre-order Derelict Britain: Beauty In Decay, published by Amberley, go to Facebook, suggysphotography
The video is at vimeo.com/420995448
For more on Lewis Hackett's work go to instagram.com/prefix_studios/ and for Dean McPhee go to instagram.com/dean_mcphee
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