The Harbour
The Harbour Jem Southam
RRB PHOTOBOOKS BRISTOL
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Narrow Quay 1978
When I started working at the Arnolfini Gallery in 1977 Bristol had turned its back on the City Docks. After centuries during which the harbour was a central hub of the commerce of the city and great generator of its wealth, the wharfs and quays had largely fallen silent. One morning in 1978 the sound of the rending and crashing of metal drew me to the window of my office at the gallery. Across the waters of Narrow Quay a group of men were tearing down a warehouse. That lunchtime I went and took a series of pictures of the destruction. So began a photographic study of the remains of the architectural landscape of the docks, which over five years produced around 1000 large format black and white negatives. My grandfather had spent his working life as a shipping clerk in the docks, managing the unloading and distribution of goods such as guano, brought over as an agricultural fertilizer all the way from the coast of Chile. He spoke of how he had been of that generation who had lived through the end of the long working relationship between horse and man. He was a last witness to an era of the docks’ life, one full of hustle and bustle, noise and smells, as many ships came and left, delivering and picking up cargoes right into the middle of the city alongside the building where I now worked. Facing out towards the Atlantic, the port had built its trading links with Ireland and the west of Europe, before its long and notorious era of slave trading between West Africa, the Caribbean and North America. In 1809 a section of the tidal River Avon was contained by locks, creating a ‘Floating Harbour’, a permanent reservoir of water which made the loading and unloading of cargoes a much more straightforward business. What remained by 1978 was a largely abandoned docklands landscape, with a complex array of quays and wharfs, warehouses, cranes, railway sidings, roads, shipyards and sand yards, sheds, houses, offices, bridges, pumping stations and slipways. Looking back, this was a kind of tipping point for the City Docks, a brief period of calm after all those centuries of activity, before the regeneration process got under way, turning the working harbour into a residential and recreational arena. This is what I set out to photograph. Most of the pictures were made on Sunday mornings. Five days a week I was working at Arnolfini, and on Saturday I ran a small photographic gallery in Clifton with a friend. Every Sunday I woke up early and peeked out the window. If the weather looked promising I would be out on my bicycle, a rickety Velborn tripod over one shoulder and a strong postman’s canvas bag with a 5x4 MPP camera, lens and six dark-slides, over the other, cycling down from Cotham to the docks to find some pictures. I rarely met a soul. The docks were empty.
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Hotwells Road 1978
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Merchant’s Dock, Hotwells Road 1978
Merchant’s Dock, Hotwells Road 1978
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Ambra Vale, Hotwells 1980
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Sand Wharf, Hotwells 1978
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Hydraulic Engine House, Cumberland Basin 1978
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View of Hotwells Sand Wharf and the Underfall Yard 1979
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Timber Drying Shed, Baltic Wharf 1978
Timber Drying Sheds, Baltic Wharf 1979
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View of Hotwells Sand Wharf from Baltic Wharf 1979
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Dry dock entrance, Albion Dockyard 1979
Crane piers, Albion Dockyard 1978
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Offices, Albion Dockyard 1979
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Shed, Albion Dockyard 1979
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SS Great Britain 1978
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View of Gas Works and Canon’s Marsh from Clifton Wood 1979
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Gas Works, Anchor Road 1979
Gas Works, Anchor Road 1979
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Canon’s Marsh 1980
Canon’s Marsh 1980
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Bonded Warehouses, Canon’s Marsh 1980
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Shed, Canon’s Marsh 1980
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Bonded Warehouses, Canon’s Marsh 1980
Coal Agency Ltd, Canon’s Marsh 1978
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Canon’s Marsh Goods Station, from Narrow Quay 1979
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Canon’s Marsh Goods Station 1978
Sheds, Canon’s Marsh 1978
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Canon’s Marsh warehouses, seen from Railway Wharf 1979
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Coaling crane base, Canon’s Marsh 1979
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Prince Street Bridge 1979
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View of Prince Street Bridge and Bathurst Wharf 1982
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Bathurst Wharf 1978
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Bathurst Parade 1978
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Bathurst Parade 1978
Bathurst Parade 1978
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Bathurst Parade 1979
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Travelling crane, Bathurst Basin 1978
The Holms Sand and Gravel Co, Bathurst Basin 1978
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Oil Seed Mill, Bathurst Basin 1980
Bonded Warehouse, Bathurst Basin 1980
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Bristol Sand and Gravel offices 1980
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Redcliffe Wharf 1979
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WCA Mill offices 1978
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WCA Mill, Redcliff Backs 1979
Buchanan’s Warehouse, Redcliff Backs 1979
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The Grove 1979
View to Welsh Back and Kings Street 1980
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Bristol Bridge from Welsh Back 1979
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Tramway Generating Station, Shot Tower and St Philip’s Bridge 1979
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Broad Plain 1980
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Vauxhall Bridge, the New Cut 1981
The New Cut 1980
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View across the New Cut towards Clifton Wood 1980
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Cumberland Road 1979
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Hydraulic Engine House, Underfall Yard 1982
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Tobacco Bond Warehouse and Ashton Swing Bridge 1978
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Dredging barge, Hotwells 1979
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In memory of Jeanne and Vaughan Southam With thanks to Deborah Ely who curated the first show of this work at the Bristol Arts Centre in 1981; John Lord who co-authored ‘The Floating Harbour’; John Sansom of Redcliff Press who published ‘The Floating Harbour’ in 1983; Jeremy Rees, Louise Lavarack and all my colleagues at the Arnolfini gallery 1977-1982; Adrian Loveless and all at The Photographers’ Above the Rainbow 1977-1984; Sue Swingler and Derrick Price who initiated a return to the docklands study in 2000; Rudi Thoemmes, the Bristol Photography Festival and the Underfall Yard who all helped reignite interest in the work in 2021; Josie Atkinson and Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski at RRB Photobooks for this publication; Bread and Butter Studio for post-production; Peter and Karen Lord for their enthusiastic support; And as always Jenny, Josie and Kate.
RRB Photobooks February 2023 Photographs & Text © Jem Southam Cover Design & Layout by Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski Image production by Bread & Butter Studio Printed at Narayana Press, Denmark ISBN 978-1-739702-32-8 rrbphotobooks.com