"Leeds is all terraces, rows and rows of back to back red brick housing. Punctuated every four or five fronts by binyards, the narrow-fronted houses stare out at each other across the road, boxers squaring up for a fight."
So reads the wonderful afterward in Back to Back (thanks SJ Bradley), a new photobook by Leeds-based photographer Ricky Adam. The photographs inside span a period of 18 years (2006-2024), but the subject remains steady - the red brick back to backs that typify the terraced housing of inner city Leeds. The vernacular is so cemented in place that it is as much a character as the people and pigeons that populate the images.
The book moves chronologically through the seasons, taking us from Autumn to Summer, a year (of many) unfurling as you flip through - from grey turbulent skies, to snow covered roofs, to tops off sunshine. Laundry dries, wonkily daubed goalposts wait for a ball, cigs are smoked, snowballs are thrown, pigeons take flight. Things that could happen anywhere, but the red brick ties us to here, to the terraces of Hyde Park, Beeston, Holbeck, Chapeltown and on, and Adam's camera captures it all beautifully.
Size: 215 x 280mm (linen hardcover with tip in / first edition of 620 copies)
Pages: 144
Publisher:
Audit / This is Ours
