Alec Gill “Hessle Road Photo Archive” – Move on and move away
What happens when a town turns the page? To rebuild, first you need to destroy. Alec Gill turns his lens to Hull’s Hessle Road, to capture the moments of life passing away from once a lively neighborhood. Alec set on documenting the dispersing fishing community, taking photographs of the changing landscape over a period of 16 years starting in 1971. And, invites us to a journey of a changing time, and the nature of humane emotions.
Change, by its nature has the ability to spread and slowly take over what was there before it. Hull’s Hessle Road, witnessed what change could do from the first hand. Once, a close-knit fishing community goes through the sad process of getting broken apart. While the houses, stores and people strayed away one by one; Alec was there to capture those moments. Standing with him the familiarity of Hull and his passion for the community, he pressed the shutter as life differed in his hometown.
While it was a somber process to see the town disintegrate, Alec’s shots are far away from gloom. Through a quick gaze you might even say that they are lively, happy and full of energy. He intends to capture the humanly acceptance and interaction of this process on people. Especially with the pictures of children, he embraces the fact that life moves on and people move on with it. The curiosity never gets lost, joy never fades away. It’s the blissful dying memories of Hessie Road, as life as it knew moves away from it. This sensual approach reminds us Shashank Verma’s “Traces of Survivance” as they both handle gloomy subjects with sunny approaches.
Alec was very precise with his technique and ways of documentation. He drew up a border and stuck to it religiously, shooting on a series of routes over a period of 16 years, witnessing the changing landscape as time went by. One of the things that makes this project quite special is Alec’s precise dedication to one road and its surrounding community. He often shot with 12 shots on a camera roll, eager to make every one of them count. “I was saddened to see more and more community houses being knocked down. Nevertheless, that is what was happening, and I had to adapt to the fluid and changing situation – especially as a documentary photographer. I had a rule to always have someone in shot before taking a photograph.”
This archive of 16 years found shape in “The Hessle Road Photo Archive Book”. A whole fifty years after the project started, Alec’s work got edited by Iranzu Baker and designed by Fran Mendez to be a bible of documentary photography. Prioritizing context over history and reflecting on Alec’s fluid approach, the pictures are scattered around the book in a non-chronological order. The book showcases Alec’s practices authentically, giving readers room to discover the community from his eyes. As he usually wandered around the neighborhood without a plan but the intent of capturing moments, we invite you to a selection of frames of a dying town:
