Description
Bernard Fallon's Liverpool is a landscape of once-familiar
faces and streets, a city that no longer exists but in those
frozen moments of time. His Liverpool captures days out at
the Grand National, enjoying the sun on Crosby beach and
kids playing in the back alleys. He also documents the last
of the 'shawlies' or 'Mary Ellens', the fading evidence of the
city's Irish roots, and the sometimes illiterate graffiti of
sectarian strife bubbling just below the surface. Here too are
those moments of community life in the 'Corpy' washhouse,
Paddy's Market and the last of the once numerous pubs of
Scottie Road. The flip side is here too, the wholesale
destruction of that lively community as streets and houses
were bulldozed to make way for the new Kingsway Tunnel
and the decline of traditional occupations including the
chimney sweep and docker.
About half the photographs in this book were taken around
Scotland Road in 1969 and 1970. By 1973 Fallon had left
Liverpool and his rolls of film went with him to London and
then California, where he now lives. The images he had so
painstakingly taken remained etched in his memory and the
idea of showing them in Liverpool took shape.
So, after more than thirty years, his superb record of a city
in transition has been made public ... and about time too!
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