A gritty portrait of radicals and upstarts in 1980s Hulme

Back in 1979, Kevin Cum­mins cap­tured the nihilis­tic beau­ty of Hulme in his stark black and white pho­to­graph of Joy Divi­sion on a snowy bridge to nowhere. The icon­ic pic­ture shaped British pho­tog­ra­ph­er Richard Davis’ sense of sto­ry­telling and style long before he ever set foot in Manchester’s most noto­ri­ous neighbourhood.

Com­ing of age in Birm­ing­ham, Davis dis­cov­ered pho­tog­ra­phy after drop­ping out of high school at 16. Inspired by Don McCullin, Gor­don Parks, and Mary Ellen Marks, Davis used his cam­era as a tool of resis­tance against the Thatch­er régime dur­ing the height of her reign.

In Sep­tem­ber 1988, Davis moved north to teach pho­tog­ra­phy at Man­ches­ter Poly­tech­nic. New arrivals were warned not to ven­ture into Hulme, a bar­ren Bru­tal­ist land­scape aban­doned by the city coun­cil — so Davis set forth the very next day to see for him­self. He quick­ly fell in with the eclec­tic mix of artists, musi­cians, rad­i­cals, and upstarts at 257 Charles Bar­ry Cres­cent where he soon lived and worked.

Now Davis revis­its this elec­tric era from his youth in the new book, Hulme (Man­ches­ter) (R23). Organ­ised as a series of bat­tered land­scapes, mag­net­ic por­traits, and graf­fi­ti scrawled tableaux, Davis’s cin­e­mat­ic pho­tographs per­fect­ly pre­serve the DIY ethos of the era. ​“We were near a city cen­tre, giv­en com­plete free­dom, left to our own devices, and we did­n’t have to pay any rent,” says Davis, who was just 22 years old at the time.

“We’re the punk gen­er­a­tion, the ones that refused to buck­le under and accept con­for­mi­ty,” he con­tin­ues. ​“Liv­ing in an area with like-mind­ed peo­ple pushed me to get up in the morn­ing. It was always cre­ative and that rubbed off on me. It made me want to go out, take pho­tos, and just do my own thing. I remem­ber hav­ing that fuck­ing urgency of not to waste my time. Every sec­ond counted.”

Rather than capit­u­late to the sta­tus quo, the Trav­ellers, ravers, stu­dents and dropouts who called Hulme home forged a com­mu­ni­ty built on cre­ativ­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and col­lec­tivism. ​“We had opt­ed out and want­ed noth­ing to do with mon­ey and pow­er,” Davis says. ​“I wasn’t mak­ing pho­to­graph for a career; I had no inter­est in think­ing along those lines. Mon­ey was nev­er part of the dis­cus­sion. I just did what I want­ed to do.”

Dur­ing Davis’ time in Hulme, the city expe­ri­enced a rebirth as ​“Mad­ch­ester” as the ​‘90s rolled in. With Thatch­er out of pow­er, Nel­son Man­dela released from prison, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new feel­ing of opti­mism emerged among the youth. At the time, pho­tog­ra­phers were few and far between, giv­ing Davis broad access to a wide swath of musi­cians, artists, writ­ers, and come­di­ans on the scene. What­ev­er mon­ey Davis made, he hap­pi­ly rein­vest­ed in the dark­room and stu­dio he oper­at­ed out of his squat.

“I find it iron­ic,” he says. ​“At the time, we were seen as ​‘the ene­my with­in’ when we actu­al­ly were the peo­ple who were cre­at­ing the cul­ture — and that’s what made Man­ches­ter a high­ly desir­able place to live in.”

Hulme (Man­ches­ter) is out now.

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