Lincoln in the 1980s, as you and many others on this Forum will know, was a very run down place with, seemingly, not a lot going for it. There was dreadful youth unemployment and very little to do in the evenings except go down the pub and get hammered. It felt stuck in a time warp. Then, at the end of the 80s, one or two things started to happen that made me think that perhaps change might be on its way. I was too late to photograph the old Ruston factories that used to be on Beevor Street being demolished in the area that is now where Currys/Oak Furniture Land, etc are now. I thought, therefore, that it would be nice to capture pictures of other areas of the city that were likely to be developed before they too were bulldozed, so I had some pictorial memories of what Lincoln looked like during my youth. Everyone takes pictures of nice bits of Lincoln, like the castle and cathedral. I thought I'd take pictures of those areas less likely to be captured on camera, but no less a part of Lincoln's heritage.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the brass to do a great deal of photography in those days (in fact, most of this pictures were taken on my sister's camera as I didn't have one), so even though there are plenty of other subjects I'm interested in, none got the level of time and effort that photographing Lincoln did. The youth scene in Lincoln was very vibrant in Lincoln at the end of the 70s, early 80s, with kids identifying as Mods, Rockers, Punks, Skinheads, etc. I'd have loved to have photographed my experience of that.
