In the early 1990s, Anne Worthington was living in Charles Barry Crescent, part of the community of artists who had made Hulme home during its final years. She was part of Dogs of Heaven, the Hulme-based collective known for large-scale outdoor performances around the estate.

The Crescents had only stood for a little over twenty years. Built as part of Manchester’s post-war housing vision, they were already nearing demolition by the time Anne began photographing them. The decks, walkways and concrete blocks that had once promised a new way of living were being emptied, altered and prepared for clearance.

Within BCA, Anne’s photographs sit in direct contrast to David Chadwick’s earlier images of Hulme. Chadwick photographed the estate in its first years, when the Crescents still carried the ambition of the period. Anne’s work records the other end of that story: Hulme in its last days, lived in by artists, squatters, residents and the people who remained as the area changed around them.

These photographs record a short-lived and much mythologised part of inner-city Manchester before it disappeared.