Heathland Water

Here -

Where...locked doors open to sharp knocking...

Where...chapel neat red velvet seats line walls of rooms that glow with stories of hill and tractor, long tipping nights, and arguments lost to hated officials...

Where...memories are painful and lonely deaths from Park Drive and Senior Service are still talked about in public houses...

Where...boasting is frowned upon...

Where...whispers are heathen across bleak land...and words are spoken loudly by clear eyed distant people...

Where...clotted shoes clamber over torn stile, delayed stone wall and heathland water..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

Documentary Fiction Photography

Steve Coel

Corners

You follows the signs - you has to - is what you does if you needs to get what you needs...is all about corners and way you deals with them - really is the truth of the matter - end of.

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

promise is a promise

Today, doorway...long corridor. Place used to be arcade. Not now. Shops are long gone, roof caved in, steel mesh windows ripped out by scrappies with walls decorated courtesy of local youth. No charge. Nice touch that.

You could say it's quiet round this way now there's nothing left to nick. Council says places like this is going to be developed. We'll see. Meantime it's where I comes to spend my days to finish jobs I been doing during the night. I'll have finished in about six months anyways. Do what the fuck they wants then. All of them. And if they ever finds out what I's been hiding round here won't be any comeback.

Promise is a promise.

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Derelict Stone

Steve Coel

In high heeled plimsoll, your shoe spears steel spines of cold, open, derelict stone.

Steve Coel

You're close to pub and laughter but in the headlight of fears grip.

Steve Coel

It's a disaster, with anger and rotten spittle flooding poorly lit cardboard city corner and short skirted nightlife.

Steve Coel

See

You can see...

metal  empty  nothing  grim  war  lost  simple  machinery  class  blind  building  hope  gaps  full  atomic  paint  street  flame  schedule  blanket  beach  valley  sweat  furnace  promise  blunt  blank  liquid  warehouse  shield  padlock  flint  bank  balance  blame

Steve Coel

I can see...

puddle  space  imagination  life  calm  fever  plastic  violence  naked  window  landmark  dream  guilt  barricade  paradise  splash  field  narrow  orchard  painting  decay  mine  blunder  silence  spindle  alley  gravel  table  canal  fence  blade  fossil  platform  waste  failure

  Steve Coel

Footfall in Albany

Morning

Is about frail, weightless older men who come into the cafe for their daily three hour coffees, game of cards and who all talk endless bollocks about non existent winning horses.

Afternoon

Is mainly about shapeless smackheads and local hard core druggies who come into the cafe to settle small debts and to boast about knowing where next deal is going to happen.

Evening

End of the day for some. Cheap fatty meals and shelter from street pain.

Late Night

Is about 'real money' being made in busy stockrooms of empty shops.

Steve Coel

The Mercy Path

Once you bypass

the last starched lightning tree

you enter a hillside world

of midnight stream

and border wire music.

Here, across shilling debris

early shadow

and blisters of high mist,

nature composes movement

from iron and broken bone.

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Tall Ships

It's found up along cobbled visions of forgotten towns in times disputed by all who lived them.

In places caught by Pentax and Olympus, children play on empty streets near to crumbled demolished homes. 

Tall ships hanging over brick wall skulk in this broken vision. Tall ships made by small people whose dreams, daily smashed, mirror the horror of this passing time.

Close by, crisp tied visitors arrive and soon leave. As they always have and always will. Visitors making quick decisions over local pie and ignored cake.

Windowless empty youth painted buildings now scatter to wind and sudden downpour.

In large open working spaces; in tired dormant, feral communities; few people gather each morning for early shift. Labour here is too vague, mechanical and undisputed. Tiredness is instant and contagious. Jokes are few, clumsy and dulled by lack of echo.

Uniforms, worn in shame, are cheap and ill fitting as they signify nothing but cowardice and lack of respect.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel

Paper Grass

Crouching; doglike alongside a fence corrugated with time, the local old man patters his way home, all memory a slight flicker in grass and paper. Liquid; sweet and delicate, reminds him of people long gone. All are now dismissed with relatives and friends, sweethearts and enemies, photographs and bruises. In a bottle he finds time and peace. In a bottle he becomes young again, a fighter, a winner.

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Steve Coel

Docks Museum

Today...dry docks glisten with salty channel rain as woollen old men sit on one of their favourite benches. Each will smile broadly as together they remember the songs and laughter of young hard welders. Today...visitors will glance at walls of dismal grey photographs. Some photographs show weary men and women waving half empty beer glasses in the air. Others are of car empty streets clogged with leather boots being dragged to early shifts. And some are of boys playing scrappy football with tight balls of Western and Echo in muddy parks bordered with adverts for cheap beer and bread. Tomorrow...the old men will return and see it all again. The departing visitors will not see them.

 Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel