Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Global economic crisis; recession; businesses going bankrupt, closing down, or otherwise ceasing to trade. With repercussions filtering down to the small trader and the man in the street.

Dire times indeed!

But, it always having been in my nature to look for the silver lining, what a super opportunity for a sort of photographic social documentary!
Hence, a newly-created set on my Flickr entitled “Bedford’s Closing Down”.
Now, I have to confess the theme was inspired by some recent work of a mate who’s been documenting photographically a similar situation in another UK town… his set is here.
But I haven’t just surreptitiously nicked the idea. Oh no! In fact we exchanged some emails about it and he suggested I might like to try a similar thing myself. And indeed its such a good idea (with potential important historical significance) that I think other photographers should get in on the act too, in their own towns.

That said, its not a totally new idea for me. Something very similar had occurred to me to do a coupla months back, that I kicked off with some shots from another part of Bedford.

But, having done that, somehow for no accountable reason the project slipped my mind.

However, wandering around town camera at ready, looking for relevant shots, I was struck by how many I actually found… far more than I’d anticipated. And this was after I’d filtered out those businesses that have closed clearly due to relocation, expansion or whatever.

In fairness I have to say that the initial pics launching the set are not all of businesses that have closed as a direct effect of the present economic crisis… some of them have actually been closed for quite a little while. But you can be sure that from now on I’ll be keeping an eagle eye on town centre businesses, so watch out for further additions to the set!