Assignment 1 – Research

After coming up with a theme to my work, I decided to do some further reading and look up places that have been abandoned or closed and why they have been closed down. One place that came straight to mind was a place that used to be very local to me and was in my home town of Bradford:

The Odeon, Bradford

The Odeon in Bradford was built in 1930 and was the third largest cinema in Britain when it was first opened. It cost £250,000 to build and set up however, was sold to Odeon in 1968, which suggests money problems early on that the primary owners couldn’t afford. However, it was not abandoned at this stage and was only closed for 9 months as the takeover took place. At one point, it did have a ballroom inside as development went on which changed the services it offered. This later closed and remained unused for 20 years. Again, it was not abandoned but I think this shows poor management as they would’ve probably made more money by making sure the public would want to use it first, and also by changing it into something else they would make money from instead of leaving it. There were later many more plans for the Odeon but none were implemented which I think shows that it was abandoned slightly as none of the ideas were pushed forward and no one stuck to them, it seems as if the owners didn’t care much for the building which is likely as Odeon is quite a big brand and have plenty of other businesses in the country to care for too. It later closed in 2000 and the Odeon in Leeds closed in 2001 and the two were combined elsewhere which would cut down on costs of running them both. Again, this may show a shortage of cash.

It has remained unused and almost completely abandoned ever since, other than locals campaigning to make use of it. I think the main reason there was no use for it was because it would simply cost too much to make it into something and with the current economic climate, I don’t think people are ready to take such a big risk yet as they could invest a lot of money into it and find they wouldn’t get any of this money back. In the end, it was bought by Bradford Council for a mere £1 which really shows how difficult it is to get buyers for some places. If it is sold for £1, there really couldn’t have been many people interested in buying it at all otherwise it would have sold for more.

Although I won’t be photographing this site, I wanted to look into it to help me further understand how and why big buildings like this are abandoned. It has helped me understand what could lead up to these sort of closures, which in this case, seemed to be poor management, which may be the same for many other places. In this case, I think it wasn’t just down to poor management. During the credit crunch, people started to cut down on treats such as going out for meals and trips to the cinema, and swapped the cinema for illegal downloads or DVD’s. I think even without the credit crunch, the rise of illegal downloads would have still affected the business.

Braunstone Gate/Bowstring Bridge, Leicester 

Another interesting read was about the Braunstone Gate bridge in Leicester. I had once seen an image of the bridge somewhere with the caption “Bridge would cost the same to demolish as it would to repair” which got me wondering why it was chosen to be demolished, when it could’ve cost the same amount to rebuild it. Surely the locals would prefer to have the bridge saved as it was a historic part of Leicester and lasted around 108 years until it was demolished. I decided to look further into this just in case these claims weren’t true and it actually cost more to repair. To begin with, I found that lack of funding had lead to poor maintenance of the bridge which lead to it’s poor state and its need to be rebuilt or demolished. I also found that the decline within the railway industry had lead to the need for it to be demolished. The decline within the railway industry may be due to the recession again. I had found out within my research that it was chosen to be demolished as the maintanence costs would be too much to keep up with, therefore in the long run it would cost more even if it would cost the same amount to demolish as it would to rebuild it.

Although I won’t be photographing either of these places, I want to research more into local places and show how these types of situations are happening all over. I have looked into a few places near me that are abandoned and hope that I can find the back stories to these and find out why they have been abandoned. If I can’t find a reason, I may leave it to the viewer to make their own assumptions but could possibly give a bit of context as to why I am photographing these places which may lead them to come to a conclusion based around the economy. For example, if I gave my work a title like “Economic Abandonment” this automatically puts the idea of the economy in the audiences mind and they may relate this to the work and build a story based upon it and draw out the meaning themselves.

Bibliography

Category : 150MC - Developing and Understanding Photographic Practice
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