Fabryka

I have a terrible memory.
It’s not just the sort of memory that means that I can’t recall phone numbers or where I put the remote, but the kind that when my parents talk fondly of family holidays from my childhood, or significant events sincem I’ll have no recollection of them. Even trips made in the last few years are blurring at the edges.
I’ll struggle to remember people if I don’t see them regularly. And even if I do recognise someone when we meet again, I’ll have no confidence on my own ability to have remembered their name correctly and so will avoid the embarrassment of using it and getting it wrong.
Taking pictures of things is how I remember them. Even then, I don’t remember the events, just the pictures.

I worked for 27 years in the same factory. I had relationships with the people that I worked and grew up with, but I also had a connection to the place; to the doors I passed through every day, the workshop walls, the light switches and windows.

The places in the photographs collected here were once busy, noisy, industrious spaces, filled with workers earning their living and living their lives, each with hopes, worries and their own memories. Every mark on a wall, each layer of peeling paint or discarded component is a trace of all that has happened here previously and all of those people that have passed by.

When spending time in these buildings, I feel this collective presence; if feels almost more tangible than my own history.

I made a zine of this work. If I have any then they're here: https://etsy.me/3nbcaWG