Photojournalim Background Research - North South Divide

From the short list of ideas the one which had the greatest depth for a documentary was the 'North South Divide. This initial idea had originated from an article in the Guardian Newspaper 12th September 2010 by Zoe Wood. The article presented the facts that although the current recession had officially ended the residents of Blackpool would be hard to convince of this fact when presented with the state of shops on their high street. Information from 'Local Data Company' had comprised a league table of shop vacancies in town centres throughout the UK. Blackpool headed the list of most vacant shops. In fact it was worst for the North when comparing the worst 25 cities, all being in the North apart from 3 in the south. Included in the top 10 cities along with Blackpool were Bradford, Manchester and Leeds.

The concept was to visit these cities and document the state of play in these town centres. However, when discussing these ideas with tutorial staff and when researching styles of documentary photography the initial ideas changed direction at pace. Due to the nature of style of researched photography a pattern was emerging - that of indexing. Further researching into  photographers of this style of photography, likes of Mark Power and Paul Graham, developed the concept further. Rather than do a piece on specific  North South cities, actually take a journey along the North South Divide. The North South Divide is a fictitious concept, their is no physical divide. However, Danny Dorling, professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield, produced a map for an exhibition at the Lowery, on 'The Myths of the North'. He based this map on life expectancy, house prices, education and even looked at political voting patterns.

This map is the bases of the journey along the North South Divide. Starting on the East coast just South of Cleethorpes to the most Northern point at Ulceby to the farthest point West, Gloucester Docks, then along the centre of the River Severn into the Bristol Channel. The actual line on Prof Dorling's  divide does not follow any transport or road system but will pass through town or countryside as appropriate.

One idea put forward was to capture the view looking North then West. However it was felt that there would not be enough compositional difference to express to the viewer. So taking a leaf out of Mark Powers work, a journey was planned to follow as near to or on the line taking images found on that route. As the route transits along many different landscapes then a representation of the divide will be captured.