Nation Coal Mineing museum - John Bulmer - Northern Soul

[Bone_Idle]

I intend to try and get there this weekend. According to their website Photography is the fastest growing area of the museum and this exhibition looks very interesting :-

Northern Soul

If I get there I'll post what I thought.

the NCM is a great place to visit anyway, haven't been for years and it was in it's infancy last time I visited, but it was fascinating.

definitely work a trip if you're in that neck of the woods.

[Malcolm_Stewart]

Thanks for the info. I hadn't heard about this one.

When I visited The Big Pit Museum at Blaenavon, Torfaen (S Wales) and did the underground tour, there was no chance of taking anything vaguely electrical down the pit-shaft. Certainly not a modern camera or phone. I found that the supplied miners' lamp had an unreliable switch which added to the realism!

[Malcolm_Stewart]

I've had another look at the text describing the exhibition, and I was surprised to find this statement:

From the early sixties John Bulmer travelled across the north of England recording everyday life in its industrial centres. What is exceptional about most of this work is the decision to use colour. In a recent interview Bulmer recalls

“It didn’t occur to anyone to take the north of England in colour – that was considered a black and white subject”.

The result was Bulmer’s own perspective on life in the north. Anyone with memories of the 1960s can identify with these images. Together they reveal an area on the verge of change, which has seen it move from one of the largest industrial centres to a culturally rich and diverse region.

Being from the north, Manchester, I know that my mother was covering it in colour on Kodachrome and Agfacolor from 1959 onwards - and I still have her collection of 000s of largely unpublished slides. The major difference is that my mother was not covering the industrial aspects of the North, and she tended to wait until people had moved out of view of her camera! So a somewhat timeless series of images... Perhaps I ought to scan them and see what gems there are!

Me? - I wasn't living in the North at this period and I shot in both B&W and colour.

[Barney]

I've got a meeting in Wakefield next month. I'll have to remember to make sure that I take the long route home.

[TheFatControlleR]

When I visited The Big Pit Museum at Blaenavon, Torfaen (S Wales) and did the underground tour, there was no chance of taking anything vaguely electrical down the pit-shaft. Certainly not a modern camera or phone...

It's the same at NCM Museum, you have to leave them in the lamp room before descending.


I'd love to go see the exhibition though, just my cup of chai... but convincing her indoors to sit in the car for three hours (all told) is another matter.

[Barney]

I'd love to go see the exhibition though, just my cup of chai... but convincing her indoors to sit in the car for three hours (all told) is another matter.

Go on your own then!