Marc Provins

Whenever I lack inspiration or creative direction I head for the coast. Yesterday was hot, and the first proper day of my summer break so I packed my camera, got in the car and headed west. An hour later I was in New Brighton, the bit of The Wirral that looks over the Liverpool skyline. It also has it's own place in photographic history being the location for Martin Parr's The Last Resort. It would seem that the intervening 30 years have been kind to the place and it looks and feels reinvented, even Parr would be hard pressed to update his series now.  Liverpool has a magnetic pull for me and so after a couple of hours exploring and seeing the city across the water I zipped through the tunnel to see things from the other side. This journey in itself is a novelty, how many cities in the world can be approached in this way I wonder? It reinforces the grandness of the place, the architecture always makes me feel like I'm in a capital city and...

Yesterday I travelled over to Liverpool for my third visit to the 2012 Biennial. One of the venues is the now disused Royal Mail sorting office, a massive space still full of the paraphernalia of getting letters and parcels to their recipients. In fact the space was much more exciting than the New Contemporaries exhibition it housed, which seemed shallow and meaningless next to the evidence of working lives lived. The high panoramic windows reveal a slither of the Liverpool skyline, partially obscured by glass coverings. So the picture I chose to make was one of the two Liverpool cathedrals, the 1960's Catholic version, in strong scouse sunshine.