Blackburn - A Town and Its People

Blackburn is a large English town, within the County of Lancashire, and is Christopher John Ball's birth place. Like many other towns in Lancashire, Blackburn's initial prosperity was due to the cotton industry, but as this started to decline in the 1930's, because of cheaper cotton imported from India etc., Blackburn had to look to other industries. Whilst it would be hard to find many people still employed within the cotton industry today, any visitor to the town would still find many relics from its rich past. The most obvious example would have to be the Leeds and Liverpool canal. A few of the surviving mills that line sections of this historic canal have been restored as working ' heritage ' museums. It is also still possible to witness the crew of barges, now only used for pleasure, using the locks as they navigate this well preserved waterway. You will find examples of such within.

The photographic images included within this section formed part of a touring exhibition, funded by both 'The North West Arts Council' and 'Blackburn Borough Council', entitled 'Blackburn a Town and Its People'

The photographs were produced between 1983 and 1985 and it was the intention, of Christopher John Ball, that the finished piece be an intimate, personal interpretation of life within the town and a chronicle of the effects that the political climate, of that time, had upon it.

Subject matter included Blackburn's rich ethnic communities, the local economy, the miners strike, privatisation, the flooding of 1985, unemployment and employment, recreation and entertainment, local, and national, politics and elections, the landscape and attempts at urban regeneration, the effects and failures of Thatcherism etc.

The finished project was first shown, in 1985, at The Lewis Textile Museum in Blackburn, England, the exhibition being opened by the current Home Secretary, and Blackburn's constituency M.P., Jack Straw before touring various venues within the UK.