Steve Conlan
Born in Bootle. It is almost inconceivable but those three simple words, an accident of birth, have had such a profound effect on my life as a photographer. Early years experience taught me that there were others who could decide our futures and categorise us as they saw fit: our little part of Bootle was deemed a ‘slum’ and therefore in need of ‘clearance’. No consideration was given to the fact that many of my aunties, uncles, cousins and grandparents all lived within four streets of each other. For them none was needed.
In my mid teens I became aware of an organisation called Bootle Arts & Action, a community arts project that involved itself in giving young people cameras to communicate their experiences. That photography could be used politically was a revelation for me and became the foundation stone for the work I was subsequently to pursue.
Early photographic work was based around Liverpool with funding from Open Eye, looking at issues of poverty, homelessness and aspects of male sexuality resulting in TV, TS. & Drag in 1985 and Somewhere Called Home in 1986. A collaboration between Open Eye and Posterngate in Hull resulted in The Hull & Liverpool Docklands in 1988. About this time I moved to Newcastle in order to make contact with Side Gallery: with its reputation and the quality of work being produced it was an obvious move. An initial two week commission to work on the Meadow Well estate was extended to become a two year project resulting in Meadow Well: an English Estate. Further commissions were gained from various sources to continue working on the estate and throughout the North East in general, including Westoe, which looked at the final weeks of a working coal mine.
Having spent so much time in and around Meadow Well, I felt the need to give back something a little more tangible than a fist full of prints and as a result became a full time youth arts development worker with the Waterville Projects over a five-year period. This has produced a number of youth based magazines and collaborative works, developed through Year of the Artist and with the Globe Gallery, coupled with ongoing small-scale photography projects. These culminated in a 2 year disposable camera project involving some 80 young people, the results of which have recently been published as eXposse, a 120 page book of photographs and writing.
Meadow Well: An English Estate
from: Photography
A housing estate in North Shields, achieving notoriety around rioting in 1991, photographed late 1980s/early 1990s in a project linked to the making of Dream On. Formerly known as The Ridges, it was also the setting for the film The Filleting Machine.
Somewhere Called Home
from: Photography
Exploration of the lives of homeless people and travellers around Liverpool, 1985/86, by a photographer who worked with Amber in the late 1980s, early 1990s, particularly on Meadow Well: An English Estate.
Unclear Family: Crook Workshop, 1993
from: Photography
A group show presentation of the work coming out of the Crook International Photography Workshop in 1993, documenting the experience of family in and around the South West Durham town.