An Elegy, The Blast Furnace, South Gare

The steelworks in it’s final moments, a term derived from emotion the image documents the withdrawal of an iconic structure which fulled the region with a sense of pride and national identity.

Foreboding, The Blast Furnace, South Gare

Responding to news that my grandfather had started to experience accelerated loss of sight, paired with the knowledge that the steelworks demolition was impending this photograh demonstrates the idea of degraded vision, it today remains a physical trace of something no more.

South Gare, is an ongoing project exploring the site of a former blast furnace in the North East of England. At the height of British industrialisation there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10 mile radius of the River Tees, but by the end of the 1970s the Redcar Blast Furnace was the only one left operational.

Sitting at the mouth of the River Tees, known locally as South Gare, the site operated as the second largest in Europe until it was decommissioned and later demolished in 2022 after years of abandonment. 

Once fuelling the region with a sense of pride and collective identity the work investigates a section of artificial land, constructed from five million tons of by-product from the neighbouring blast furnace. 

Surveying this space as a basis to explore regions industrial heritage, the work seeks to demonstrate the collective loss felt amongst the community stripped of its societal worth undergoing physical dismantling.





















Specification;

32 2/8 x 40 1/5 
Gelatin silver print from negative
Welded box frame patinated from Redcar Steel           
AN ELEGY, THE BLAST FURNACE, SOUTH GARE