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Closing Time

11th January 2011

Photographer Kevin Casey is interviewed in conversation with Kenn Taylor- contributing writer of ‘Closing time- the lost pubs of liverpool’

Closing time is being exhibited at RIBA, 82 Wood Street from 12th January to 10th February (see what’s on for further details)

KT: So tell me, how did this project began and, why pubs?

KC: Basically, it started two years ago, every time I’d go on a car or train journey, or go to the football, a lot of the pubs, little by little where starting to shut down, and I just thought, well, with my background being photography…

KT: How did you go about finding the pubs?

KC: Initially it was ones that I saw on my journeys to work, or going to the football. I also asked people who I knew who used to work in a lot of pubs in different areas, some of my friends, family members who used to run pubs or if they knew of any pubs that had closed. A lot of the time when I was photographing, on the way to go to a location I’d take an alternative route to get there and I could find two or three pubs I’d never even heard of on the way.

KT: When you were shooting, were you consciously trying to capture or portray anything?

KC: It’s impossible to be impartial when you’re documenting or photographing anything, it would have been very easy to do an abstract, photo-shopped, heavily-burnt image and put surreal colours, tones onto them, but, personally, I don’t think that is true photographic documentary.

There are always exceptions to the rule, but basically my idea was to be as impartial as possible, and not overly romanticise the images, like if the day was extremely sunny and it was almost making some of the buildings seem angelic with, like, a halo behind them, I’d go and shoot again. So even though they look like quite simple images, it’s quite hard to get that well-rounded uniformed sort of shot, especially with the weather in this country which goes from one extreme to the other.

KT: When taking these pictures, did you have a desire to preserve something, to capture it before it went?

KC: I’d like people to appreciate them now, but I also think that they might have greater emphasis in ten, twenty, thirty years time, when we look back on a lot of these buildings, I think it’s a given that the majority of them will not be standing anymore, or at least will not be a pub.

KT: You originally started shooting this project on a film camera didn’t you?

KC: I started using a Large Format 5×4 camera, with dark slide plates with negatives five by four inches. Because the negative is so big you get a lot of detail, but I changed to digital for the final project.

KT: Why so?

KC: I don’t drive, so I’d end up having to wheel this camera around most of Liverpool in a suitcase. Also, it’s quite expensive. It would cost over £15 to buy, process and scan one negative, times that by a hundred pubs not including re-shoots, well…that’s a lot of money. Another reason for shooting on a smaller format camera was my football injury, the tendons in my wrists got popped out of place, so it was physically hard walking around with a huge camera and tripod.

KT: Why did you choose the 5×4 camera in the first instance?

KC: The 5×4 is more or less built for landscapes. You can tilt the horizon to fit in with certain landscapes if you’re in a very tight road, as a lot of these pubs are. I wanted to shoot it on a camera were I could capture a lot of detail. So when I switched to digital I got the highest resolution SLR camera I could afford.

KT: Tell me about your experience of shooting the images. Did it generate a lot of interest amongst passers by?

KC: Yes, there was a lot of interest, and a lot of suspicion as well.

Interestingly, when I was using the 5×4 camera, because it’s this big box of a mechanical machine, and that you’re standing very still for long periods of time, people used to think it was a speed camera. So if you were near a road, cars would slow down. Most people were great. They’d stop and chat to you and even suggest or point out other places I could go to. People were interested and wanted to get involved and start talking about their childhood, and the pubs they used to go to.

There was one occasion when I was shooting around the Dock Road. I was wheeling my 5×4 camera around, and a police car was circling the area, and kept looking out of the window at me. They saw this bulging case that I was wheeling around, so they pulled me over and said: ‘Okay then, we’re intrigued.’ So I said: ‘I’m taking these photographs…’ they were quite suspicious to start with, they asked me to open the case and show them the camera, then they said: ‘which pubs have you got?’ And I said: ‘I’ve got this one and this one.’ And they said ‘Have you got that one down the road?’ And I said: ‘Oh yeah.’ I won’t name the pub, but let’s say…they offered extra services in the upstairs part of the pub. And they said: ‘Yeah. Have you got that other one further down the road?’ I said: ‘That one’s still open’ and then they said: ‘It is now but we’re going to raid it in a few days and have it closed down!’ So it went from suspicion to getting tip offs from the police about which pubs they were going to get closed down!

KT: What were your own feelings then, whilst shooting the project, having seen all these pubs, going to these communities?

KC: You go through different stages. You go through a sort of, selfish stage of ‘That’s a good idea for a project, it might get me some attention.’ And then you feel a little bit guilty for that, because your project is the fact that these things are in decline. Something draws a lot of photographers to things that are decline, there’s a beauty, a sort of fallen grace if you like.

I also had a lot of empathy towards it, because my family have been involved in pubs for a long time and I used to spend a lot of time from an early age in my cousin, aunties and nan’s pubs, I used to run around, play on the dartboard before they opened up the doors. So, at one point I thought: ‘Am I taking advantage of this fact’ and part of me said ‘yes’ and then the other part of me thought, ‘well, I don’t see why not’. I wasn’t just going to take snapshots and then quickly release something just for the hell of it. I wanted to get communities involved. I’m trying to start aWiki page where people can contribute their own photographs, stories and memories, I’d say I’m doing it in an honest way.

KT: Tell me what photographer’s have influenced you, either in general or for this particular project?

KC: I love Andreas Gursky’s work, the Becher school; Edward Burtynsky, grand landscapes, high statements. The power and size of their images forces you to look at it. They’ve definitely had an influence about how I think with colour. You can see the fading and deterioration of a building more than you can do with the Becher’s work in monotone black and white, because it’s more or less the same tones. You can see little details, like the brickwork that is starting to erode, or the pub sign which has got faded paint dropping off, that was one of the reasons I decided to shoot in colour.

KT: Did you think shooting in black and white would romanticise the images too much?

KC: I didn’t want to overly romanticise the buildings, but I didn’t want them seen as cold either. I think by putting the pubs as individual images on the page themselves, they’re treated individually, it goes back to why the images were shot in portrait, to show that they have their own personality, as much as a building can have its own personality.

KT: How do you think this work fits in with other photographic representations of Merseyside?

KC: The most well-known ones that spring to mind, Martin Parr’s The Last Resort, and any given Tom Wood book. Bus Odyssey maybe? They show decline, or a working-class way of life. I’m more pro-Scouse than anyone, there are great things happening in the city and in time I hope to document those things. This project might have links to the stereotype, decline, recession, whatever, but you can’t ignore that its such a huge subject relating to Liverpool. Of course, this problem is national, at one point there were fifty two pubs closing down every week across the country. But I’m from Liverpool, I know Liverpool, so I’ve got more of an insider knowledge of where some of the pubs may be. If I travelled somewhere else in the country, I’d feel a little bit more dishonest about it. Even though as a photographer you do have that right to go anywhere and take pictures. I feel that, because I’ve got a connection to the area, and even to some of the pubs, I’m not just showing decline in Merseyside to add to a stereotype.