The Architectural Photographer Begins - Picture of the week for 19 Sept 2012

This was the view which I saw, every day, from the windows of the studio in Brighton College of Art, while I was a student there. It's one of the earliest architectural photographs I took, but at the time I was unaware that it was an architectural photograph. I was studying fine art and, while the course was not engaging me, this view always did. When I left, I went on to study photography at Ealing Technical College.




Rooftops - view to rear of Grand Parade, Brighton C1970/ 1971, shot on Ilford 125 film with a Zenit B 35mm camera.

This higgledy-piggledy array of roofs, windows, chimneys, fire-escapes, fascinated me then and still does. It has many of the abstract qualities which I was being introduced to in the work of artists I was studying, angles, planes, light, dark and texture. It also had the drama and mystery of humanity - and this was just some of what was missing from the teaching. I didn't understand conceptual art and found minimalism just boring, I had no idea what to paint so I gazed out of the window at this view.

Who built these structures? Who lives behind those windows, do they aspire to the more modern flats in the far background? Who has died in those rooms, who was born in them? Who has has a pint, or two, in the Norfolk Arms? The back entrance to this pub's saloon bar is visible at the bottom of the photograph.

The answer to this last question, who has had a pint in the Norfolk Arms, is me and probably every other student who attended The College of Art since it opened in 1859, as the pub is a few years older. The frontage of the Norfolk Arms is hardly grander than the rear, although it stands on Brighton's Grand Parade, as does the front of the College of Art.

Both have changed since I was there. The College of Art was then part of Brighton Polytechnic, now it's part of Brighton University. As for the Norfolk Arms, it remains a student pub, though in the 1980's it was renamed Hector's House and became a popular music venue. It's now known as The Blind Tiger, which doesn't seem to be an improvement.