Going Back
These images evoke for me a backdrop of remembered adolescence. They depict a journey, both spatial and temporal, back to the North-east seaside towns where I grew up, and back to another time. I was interested in what may be the universal in any 'going back' where the past can exist in the present and the present in the past, so that in the act of looking we may see not only the present day landscape but also a mental overlay of the site it once was. A dark, deserted funfair marks the end of the journey. The Spanish City at Whitley Bay, built in 1903 and pulled down just months after this work, was summer backdrop for generations of teenage desire, played out in nights filled with excitement, the smell of diesel, and music deafening at every ride.
