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Véronique Lesperat-Hequet (Photographer)
Original Side Gallery touring exhibition text, 1994:
In September 1993 French photographer Veronique Lesperat-Hequet joined 12 other photographers from around the globe to work for three weeks in the West Durham area, documenting the people and their lives in our towns and villages. She chose to work in Sunniside, which she felt encapsulated the story of so many other Durham villages-built for coal, but with a pit long-gone. After she had left, this is what she wrote:
On a short walk from the County Durham town of Crook is a hill swept by the cold October winds. The old mine workings of Sunniside have been closed for many years, but the villagers still recall the days when everyone’s life revolved around the mine. The chimneys on the little houses still spit out that black anthracite smoke which produces a persistent, acidy odour in the air. The mine closed, but the people stayed on here, and what might have become a ghost village after years of the black gold rush, is now a quiet community that lives by the rhythm of the seasons, and the daily arrival of the school bus. The lack of work and of prospects for the future regularly crops up in everyday conversations. Sometimes, this sense of hopelessness is visible in the eyes of those you come across in the inevitable 'English Pub', at the village shop 'where you can get anything', or the community centre. Sunniside, a village wholly built by the mine owners for their workers, today houses a community which retains the miners’ great warmth, where even someone who is not from the village will find in every street open doors, where you are welcomed to come in and enjoy 'a fine cup of tea'.
Note: This project was developed in the context of the Unclear Family international photography project based at Crook in 1993.