Past exhibition · Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre · 4 February–18 May 2023
Curated by British Culture Archive founder Paul Wright, Life in the North, 1970s—1980s brought the work of Luis Bustamante, Thomas Blower, Chris Hunt and Don Tonge to Bury Art Museum, alongside photographs and memorabilia contributed to The People’s Archive.
The exhibition explored everyday life across northern towns and cities: children playing, friendships, family life and streets shaped by industrial and urban change. Established photographic archives and personal collections were presented together, recognising the different ways people record the places they call home.
Tonge’s photographs record the Bolton he knew: its streets, markets, fairgrounds and the people around him. Many of those photographed were friends or familiar faces. His images find humour and character in everyday encounters, alongside the town’s changing industrial landscape.
Blower photographed Manchester and its surrounding estates during the 1970s and early 1980s. His work from Hattersley, Ancoats and Moss Side records children’s play and daily life amid clearance and redevelopment. BCA first published a selection of these previously little-seen photographs in 2019.
Bustamante arrived in Hull as a refugee from Chile in 1974 and began photographing his adopted city and other places across Britain. His Manchester photographs from 1979 record the streets, buildings and public spaces of a city in transition.
Hunt began photographing his neighbours on Beeton Grove in 1974, combining portraits with conversations about family, work, housing and migration. His sustained attention to one Manchester street places the people who lived there at the centre of its history.
Photographs and memorabilia contributed by the public brought another kind of record into the museum. Family albums, snapshots and personal collections sat alongside the documentary photographs, preserving experiences that might otherwise remain outside public archives.
The displays connected the wider story of northern life with individual memories: the people, places and small details that give an image meaning. They reflected BCA’s continuing work to protect and share everyday photography, with its contributors and their stories at the centre.
Exhibition
Life in the North, 1970s—1980s
Venue
Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre, Moss Street, Bury
Dates
4 February–18 May 2023
Curator
Paul Wright, British Culture Archive
Photographers
Luis Bustamante, Thomas Blower, Chris Hunt and Don Tonge, alongside contributors to The People’s Archive
For exhibition, partnership and press enquiries:
contact@britishculturearchive.co.uk