IN-PERSON ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper examines how photographic documentary art practice mediates between cultural pasts and urban futures within the 21st Century context of industrial and working-class decline. Contemporary photographic imagery of the town of Northampton, UK, is constructed and presented. In the 19th century Northampton was the predominant centre of England’s shoe and leather-working industries. By the early 20th century, it had developed an industrial landscape in which a distinct compact architectural working-class environment had developed. Late 20th century economics globally led to a decline of the footwear and leather industries, abandoning the factories and supporting amenities. The project focuses on both disused and still-operational shoe factories in the present day. The objective is to document the persistence and transformation of working-class space. By recording the conversion of the architecture into housing, restaurants, and hybrid commercial uses imagery reflects the pressures of regeneration, migration, and local governance through architectural visual exposure. The research employs a methodological, systematic, site-based photographic strategy emphasising repetition, seriality, and typological comparison. It draws on practitioners Bernd and Hilla Becher, theorist /practitioner Allan Sekula and heritage writing from Dr Colin Sterling. The resulting composite image panels function as both evidential records and critical interventions.
Positioned within critical discourse, the paper ultimately argues that post-industrial sites operate as contested terrains where visual art representation, planning frameworks, and cultural memory actively construct the relationship between urban futures and cultural pasts. https://www.richwhitehead.com/p600880069