All that's left

I've recently started doing some collaborative work with photographer Simon Sugden who has a similar passion to me for abandoned and derelict places.

Taking his photographs as starting points, I'm working on a series of prints based on staircases in empty buildings. There's a feeling of somewhere leading up, leading down, not knowing what will be found. Stairs lead us somewhere, but we're not sure where. People have walked these stairs before us. Will anyone walk them again? Who was here? What happened?

This is the first photo that I started with. It's from some abandoned offices in an old building the centre of Bradford.


Initially I played around with repeating and flipping the stairs, multiplying and staggering them to create a confusion of up and down, in and out.

I wanted to combine the stairs image with text relating to the past life of the building but I've not been able to find out what the offices were used for.

Instead, I decided to use documents relating to the past of my own home and the people of its past. They too have come and gone, leaving behind their mark, but mostly unnoticed and unremembered.

I kept the script fairly lightly coloured so it didn't fight for attention with the spiralling of the stairs.

Much of the text is hidden so you notice the words but can't quite work out what it says. Like the people of the past to whom it refers. We get glimpses of their lives, but there's so much we can only guess about them. Just like the life of the old offices.

This is now available to buy in my Etsy shop along with some of my other screen prints & lino prints at www.etsy.com/uk/shop/jennyzigzag

And you can see Simon Sugden's fabulous photography at www.flickr.com/photos/suggys_photography