Birkenhead

Nick Wynne’s colour photographs document everyday life in Birkenhead during the 1980s—from back-alleys and bus depots to corner newsagents and tiled pub fronts. The series sits within the British Culture Archive’s focus on social documentary and regional histories of Merseyside.

Wynne first picked up a camera at school in the early 1980s before studying in Wallasey under Tom Wood, whose influence helped shape his early approach. During this period, he began photographing a traveller community in North Wales alongside life in Liverpool and Merseyside. He later trained under Nick Hedges at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and continued his studies at Newport at the time Daniel Meadows was leading the course, placing him within a lineage of significant British documentary practice.

In recent years, Wynne has continued to work on self-funded projects at home and abroad, including in Beirut, exploring how communities respond to difficult circumstances and shifting environments. His work now reflects an awareness of how photography is perceived — the growing negotiation between documenting a place and managing people’s expectations, hesitations, and the changing presence of the camera.

What remains constant is his interest in the everyday. These photographs of 1980s Birkenhead stand as a record of a town in transition, seen through the eyes of someone who pays close attention and keeps returning to the places that shaped him.