The month has turned again and it’s time for the new exhibition at Tea Amantes. Following on from Kenny McCrae, the new show features another photo walk stalwart, Lee Cobb. David Simper caught the service 61 bus to the town centre to catch Lee’s vision.
The clocks have gone back since last month’s show launch and so it felt a little strange for Corporation Street to be that much darker as I disembarked from the bus and walked the short distance down Albert Road to the Tea Amantes cafe and gallery. A good crowd was in the house, including many faces from the photo walks that we all enjoy.
I took a quick turn around the prints on show, which impress with their intensity, so many being taken in the dark. The subjects are selected carefully and tight composition homes the eye onto the crux of each image. These are classic photo-realism pictures and while the layout might follow the ‘rules’ (of thirds) they are effectively better for this, being bold uncompromising pictures. There is a mix of black and white and colour. The colour is interesting being muted, rather than conforming to any Kodachrome saturated cliche.
Lee asks himself why he takes pictures of Blackpool’s forgotten and struggling streets, with their boarded shop fronts and remaining businesses clinging on. The current Blackpool is very different from the one he remembered from childhood, a feeling I think a lot of us have; on returning here to live and take up my job, I noticed a tree growing out of the Winter Gardens facade. The answer is that despite everything, it still possesses beauty in his eyes, the beauty of imperfection.
Interviewing Lee turned into something of a double act between Amanda and myself. Amanda started.
Over what period have these images been taken over?
“The shots that are here were taken, a lot from summer, but more are from the winter side of things. You can tell by how desolate it is; there’s not a lot of people around. I’d come in at night, I’d finish work and be taking shots from about half six in the evening to about 9 o’clock. Slow shutter release to bring out the colours and make sure everything’s nice and sharp.”
What was your initial reaction after being away and then coming back to Blackpool in its current state?
“It was sadness. Seeing the complete opposite of the way I remembered it. I could recall hustle and bustle and the smell of the deep fried foods and sugar. People walking along with bags, almost like a Giles cartoon. Hustle and bustle everywhere; so exciting and vibrant. You come back and you go, what’s happened here? It felt to me that my memories had been trampled over. But, the more I exorcised the demons with the camera, the more I started to see it in a different light; I saw the beauty. I’ve always loved decay and that was here in abundance. I noticed the loneliness; there’s a huge amount of loneliness in the pictures.”
I remark that Lee has shot a lot of incredibly well-composed desolation and half jokingly ask if there’s a market for this?
“I don’t know if there’s a market for it, I’m certainly not doing it for monetary gain. For me this is to capture something that is deep inside of me. I’m expressing a love for this type of thing, there’s always this nostalgia effect; I am that kind of person, I contemplate a lot and look over things I’ve taken and get a perspective on it. I did an MA in Graphic Design and it was on decay. I went straight through and got a first in that, because I was doing something that was so captivating to me. I didn’t realise that doing this piece I’d reverted to type again.”
Amanda asks, what is it that grabs Lee about decay?
“It is that Japanese wabi-sabi thing about the beauty of decay; I just love things that are breaking down. I wonder if there’s a metaphorical side to it as well; it’s happening to us all, look at us, we’re all breaking down. I do think it’s got that metaphor side for our own existence. Sally Mann did a great set of pictures called ‘What Remains’, based in an American scientific body farm. She went round with a wet plate collodion camera and got up close to these bodies taking pictures of them decaying. This book might initially seem horrid, but it’s not at all, it’s natural and it really grounds you; we’re all going to be there eventually. It tends to sober you.”
I noted that Lee used colour intermittently amongst his contrasting black and white images. I asked what is behind these choices?
“The colour ones are all night and the black and white ones are all day. I’ve given the colour an enhancement in Light Room to get some of those colours out, trying to capture a feel. There’s something that comes out in my head with those type of colours, a certain warmth. I didn’t want this to be a picture of ‘look how terrible Blackpool is’, I really really didn’t want that: I didn’t want this looking like a terrible area, it had to be beautiful.”
Digital or film?
“All digital! Post-processing gives me the switch between colour and black and white later on. Normally when I’m shooting I do so in black and white, because I need to relax my mind a bit and look at just tone. I do have an affinity with night shooting; the vibrant rich colours that come out and the deep blacks. I shot in colour for this in the night time; in the day, back to black and white again.”
What’s next on Lee’s agenda?
“This one has finished, I think I’ve done everything that I need to and I feel I’m going to go onto something that’s quite abstract. It’s not going to gain many fans, it’s going to be something that’s quite self-indulgent. But I trying to search for something, feel, in the shots. It’s not going to be technical in the shots a lot of the time; I want get shots that you can’t tell what it is, but there’s something there. Something intangible. I think I’m going to go down that route; I’ve been looking at a lot of abstract expressionism of late. I’m studying the meaning in why people do things. Why do people take photographs, why do we do what we do; why do artists paint? I’m trying to find the essence of that. I want to do a project that digs deeper.”
Thanks to Lee to talking to Amanda and I and giving us these insights into his work. Congratulations on a fine exhibition. Thanks as ever, to the Tea Amantes crew for looking after us; those little cakes are very moreish.
The exhibition is on show at the Tea Amantes gallery and cafe until 30th November 2025.
