3 Review(s)

A photographic narration of urban and social change in Manchester. Draws connections between place and working class identity. A book for anybody interested in Manchester, architectural history, or working class life.Southern Street addresses the immense urban changes that have taken place in Manchester, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.Abandoned Victorian terraced houses were barricaded, condemned and disappeared. The houses, which gradually took on an individual character over the decades, originally symbolized the radical transformation of the English 'working classes' and their day-to-day life. They ultimately became a mere metaphor for a comprehensive societal transformation that happened in the early twenty-first century.The Southern Street series does more than document these buildings-gone-by. It portrays both the concrete 'place' and the identity built upon it, provoking an immediate reaction.