Luis Bustamante photographed Manchester in 1979 as part of the British archive he began after arriving in Hull as a political refugee from Chile in December 1974.

The six photographs are concentrated around Oxford Road, Oxford Road Station, the university district and Hulme. Rather than a citywide survey, they document a defined route through Manchester, including railway infrastructure, public houses, deck-access housing, a café and street posters.

One photograph places the sequence within a specific cultural moment. A poster advertises John Cooper Clarke at the Free Trade Hall on 25 June 1979, supported by Fashion and Joy Division. Another promotes the Manchester reggae group Exodus at the Russell Club on Royce Road in Hulme. The Russell Club hosted the Factory nights from which Factory Records took its name.

The Salisbury and the Ducie Arms remain, while much of Hulme’s deck-access housing and the Russell Club were subsequently demolished. The photographs bring surviving locations together with buildings and cultural spaces removed through later redevelopment.

The poster photograph and other work from the series were included in a section curated by British Culture Archive for Use Hearing Protection: The Early Years of Factory Records at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, in 2021. Further work from Bustamante’s archive was exhibited at Bury Art Museum in 2023 as part of Life in the North | 1970s–1980s.