Birmingham Smithfield Markets

The first portrait I made at Birmingham Smithfield Markets was one of the hardest. It's always like that, getting started, being somewhere and asking for people's time, then really taking it, shooting large format, with a paper negative, and a 6 second exposure. Hardly anyone sits down here, nor stays (stayed) still very long. I got to know Steve a little, over the 2 years or so I was shooting this work: a really great guy, who opened the door for me, gave me the time of day.

Treated with offhand contempt by some of the traders, he had a quiet air, and was, as much as you could be where so many interactions flickered, withdrawn, eyes down, getting what he needed to stock up that day to get on with the long day. He was pleased with the print, perhaps surprised for the interest I'd shown him. If he felt an outsider there, I did too at the beginning.

I was working with an old, large format camera, on a heavy tripod, with an LED lamp on a lamp stand, carrying film holders, light meter, prints to give out to those I'd previously photographed, and a sheaf of flyers and consent forms. All this made the work slow; sometimes I'd go and get nothing, feel wrong, in the half light, at 4am, with the sweet dying air filling those bleak, rotting halls. But other times it would work well.

The vast shell of the Birmingham Smithfield Wholesale Markets was like a ruined town, with a fraction of its heyday size and population, but still twined into the roots of the wider city which began as trade on stalls near the site. It fed a region. This man was there early, around 2am. Well turned out, hence the nickname.

It became hard to work effectively with paper negatives at ISO 3: maybe the lamp I started to use was too harsh, or I was developing too strong, so when they were sharp (the subject was still enough) it worked less well than the first few. There was much missing too, from these monumental framings - the lights behind, there was much to reveal.

I couldn't continue to crop out the context, to capture only the illuminated visage of the man (almost always a man), looking out of the dark world behind him, beyond the frame. This was a working, living, world: the marks, tools, notes, scraps, the empty rooms, the silences. They all spoke, speak.

The form of these cavernous spaces, how they converged, and one space led to another, previously unknown, meant that I discovered different sectors progressively. Turning right from the first hall, which was on your left going into the site, and which was my natural entry, led to a new world. This gentleman had had his stall for many years; beyond his post was the Asian and Caribbean sector, busier, it seemed, open later; brighter, with the early morning sun; warmer too.

In the daytime, I had passed the Moat Lane entrance to the markets on innumerable occasions, without knowing how much of the life of the city, the wider region led out from that point: virtually all the restaurants, independent supermarkets, caterers and of course, the fruit and veg sold outside the Queen Elisabeth Hospital, would come in on lorries throughout the day, and back out from the stores to the stalls, then onto barrows and forklifts to vans to the suburbs, to spread out into the homes and bellies of all of us.

Long unsociable hours, in the orange half light of the high sodium floods, and hard, physical work, with camaraderie and banter, and constant taking of the piss - the more I worked there, the more I got why you would.

A regular customer at Paul's, they called her 'Chinese Tina'. I don't know if either term relates to who she was.

There are over 250 portraits, I think, from November 2016 to May 2018 when the site closed for custom forever, businesses moving to a new privately run site in Perry Barr.

Everyone came to Jo's Cafe. Even people with no specific business there on that day, like Martin, who had been involved in motor racing, and remembered when the site was used as the cars' paddock for the Grand Prix in Birmingham.

As the city has welcomed communities from across Europe and the wider world, the food and customer base has evolved too. These men from Romania ran a food shop.

Many of the barrows have survived from the Victorian Market that preceded the buildings worked in here.

In the fish market.

In the last days of trading, many customers were upset by what was to come. He sells flowers and plants in the outdoor market nearby, and carried out his business on foot. A different story to buy a van and go to Perry Barr each day to the new site.

The business would carry on inevitably, with some more ready to adapt than others.

The last days at Jo's had an air of unreality; there was to be no cafe at the new site. This business had no where to go.

Few businesses remained in these last days in the meat hall.

It would always be at the end of the morning I'd find a fork lift driver with time to wait for me to set up, focus, frame and shoot.

After the business had shut, and all the 30 years' custom and customers were gone, Jo still sat in the cafe, not knowing what to do. I've never had a breakfast like it. Four eggs for the regular one. He'd give one to this street homeless guy, Dan, whenever he came in. You want me to eat it or climb over it? someone said, once. This was the heart of the place.