Phil Poole Photography

In pre-war Britain the influence of modernist architecture was minimal but in the post-war period British architects and developers embraced the movement. This style is evident from the early 1950s and by the mid-point of the decade it came to be known as ‘New Brutalism’ or simply ‘Brutalism,’ derived from Le Corbusier's ‘béton brut’, French for raw concrete.

Almost from inception the movement had its detractors and the chorus of criticism increased from the early 1980s. Anglia Square, Norwich’s major Brutalist development, has also come in for extensive criticism and after a long period of decline is now the focus of redevelopment plans. With this in mind I decided to document what remains of the development in a photobook.

The Anglia Square complex was built in an area that had been heavily bombed in 1942 and after the war was designated for redevelopment. Construction began in 1966 and was completed in the early 1970s. Additional phases, including a motel, were planned and designed but never built. Constructed for Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) which was relocated from London, Sovereign House was pivotal to the complex. While it is the undoubted architectural highlight of the development, the Odeon Cinema was also a bold 1960s design and state of the art when built.

Ill-conceived, often over-zealous urban planning and inadequate maintenance set the scene for the eventual fall from grace of showpiece Brutalist developments in Britain but a catalyst was also the loss of inner city jobs. For Anglia Square, the closure of Sovereign House in 1996 on HMSO privatisation significantly reduced the footfall in the retail and leisure facilities. The development never recovered from this blow. And, as with many Brutalist developments, a lack of investment exacerbated decline and encouraged vandalism.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Brutalism and I hope that this increased awareness will help to protect what remains of the controversial architectural legacy of New Brutalism in Britain.

See Phil’s recently published book Old Brutalism which documents the Anglia Square Brutalist development in Norwich, England (available from The Book Hive bookshop and Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich).

Looking for clues to the state of the nation as we go through the the biggest political change in a generation, I’ve focused on what Iggy Pop called the “city’s ripped backsides” - inner city areas geographically close to the economically vibrant parts of towns and cities but far removed in context.

Most of my life has been spent living in UK cities, including Birmingham where I grew up and east London where I lived for much of my adult life.

They are constantly changing, shaped by social and economic forces and planning cycles.  In recent years, globalisation and online retailing have taken their toll, ripping the commercial heart out of inner cities as shops and factories closed and jobs disappeared.

Now well past their sell-by date, 1960s ‘Brutalist’ concrete under-passes, tower blocks and other exhausted elements of our urban infrastructure legacy decay with little prospect of regeneration.

Inhabited by the impoverished and people on the margins of society, these twilight areas provide insights into a range of disturbing home-grown problems that have nothing to do with Brussels and won’t be cured by Brexit.

This is an ongoing, long-term project.

The images in this gallery are taken from a combination of photo shoot collaborations with creative artists based at Norwich University of the Arts in Norwich, England. Like the portraits in the 1920s/30s Female Portrait Aesthetic gallery, also on this site, they were shot in black and white mostly using a single continuous lighting source, deliberately generating strong shadows and using a barn door attachment to accentuate the effect.

In all of these shoots I was looking to generate evidence of ‘attitude’ from the various models, combined in some cases with a retro feel. They were shot using a combination of digital and 35mm film which I scanned, the latter used to generate more grain and texture in the images to accentuate certain effects. In some cases this was enhanced by using a low camera angle or close cropping.

I am open to collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

These images are taken from photoshoot collaborations with the Norwich-based fashion designer Rebekah Pledger and textile designer Lily Winterbone, recreating the aesthetics of 1920s/30s female portraiture.

I used high contrast lighting to create strong modelling with deliberate facial shadows and shot against a dead black background.

We set out to recreate iconic transformations along the lines of Dora Maar and Claude Cahun amongst others, Rebekah being keen to gain a more personal understanding of the emotion behind their art.

In terms of technique, the images give a nod to the photographic styles of Lee Miller and Man Ray.

I am open to additional collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

This is a selection of images from a collaboration with the talented visual artists Stephanie Kyek and Moyses Gomez.

We set out to recreate the visual aesthetics of Film Noir cinema with high contrast, stark lighting effects, deep shadows and the use of so-called ‘cookies’ to shape the light and shadows.

Both Stephanie and Moyses use moving images as a key element of their work and Film Noir was a technique used to create atmosphere in many American post-war crime movies.

I have also added a more playful image of Stephanie from the end of the shoot, messy hair and a big smile.

I am open to collaborations or commissions to further develop this body of work.

In December 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved and the constituent republics formed new independent states. At the time I was travelling there frequently on business and continued to do so over the next 10 or so years. This collection of 35 mm black and white images records Russia in the initial years after the USSR broke up and documents some of the changes that took place in this tumultuous period.

Rampant capitalism replaced the dead hand of centralised state planning and income differentials exploded. Oligarchs enriched themselves from the rapid privatisation of state assets while pensioners and others on fixed incomes saw their standard of living plummet, eroded by rapid inflation and currency depreciation.

Muscovites queued for hours to get their first taste of a Big Mac while babushkas sold whatever they could to eke out a meagre existence. Those in power lined their pockets.

I am still sorting through my collection of black and white negatives from this period, most of which have never been printed, and will add additional images to the site over time.

One of the benefits of having time on my hands during the Lockdown is that I have been able to use some of the old film cameras in my collection, albeit with a limited subject range.

These images were all taken on a vintage 1960 ‘Moscow 5’ folding camera which is a Soviet copy of the German pre-war Zeiss Ikonta.

The camera uses 120 film in either 6x9 or 6x6 formats. It has a coupled rangefinder and a 4 element Tessar-type, single coated lens. It is a strange, in some ways difficult, camera to use, particularly because the shutter release is on the left hand side rather than the normal right hand side which takes a lot of getting used to.

However, the Industar 105mm F3.5 lens is sharp and contrasty from about F5.6 and the copy that I bought from Ukraine on ebay is in good condition with no light leaks from the bellows or through the camera back.

All the shots loaded here were taken using the camera on 6x6 format, giving a slight telephoto effect from the 105mm lens. I used Ilford FP4 film, developed in ID 11 for the recommended time and then scanned on an Epson V800.

That’s the year my Rolleiflex Automat 3.5 Series twin lens reflex camera was made in the western part of a divided Germany, still recovering from war.

According to some online sources the Zeiss-Opton 75mm Tessar F3.5 taking lens fitted to the camera was not as reliable as the prewar Rollei lenses and suffered from quality control problems. And, of course, this lens was superseded by the faster and now legendary Zeiss Planar F2.8 taking lens, almost a stop faster than the one fitted to mine.

Anyway. Having bought this rather cheaply some years ago on ebay, as part of a plan to keep myself from going stir crazy through Lockdown and home schooling for my eight year old daughter, I got it out from the back of the camera cupboard, blew off the dust and fitted a roll of Ilford FP4.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the results, particularly the way the combination of the lens and film renders skin tones.

The two portraits of my youngest daughter Mikayla lit by window light are nicely sharp but not obtrusively so. The second portrait was taken using a so-called Rolleinar attachment on the front of the lens. Effectively adding an additional element that reduces the close focusing distance without adding to the required exposure. Clever.

Outside it also performs decently and, although only single coated, the lens seems to handle flare pretty well.

It’s also a pleasure to use. Particularly now I’ve replaced the dark viewing screen with an old screen from a Mamiya RB67 that I cut down to size.

All in all, I don’t see the Rollei going to the back of the camera cupboard any time soon!

How do you sum up a life in a single image or sculpture? That is the question faced by descendants in countries where the tradition is to put a portrait on graves in memoriam.

This practice was widespread in the Former Soviet Union and continues to be in successor countries, including Ukraine. If it was a long life, should that image look back to youth or represent old age? Should it be a lone portrait or include a spouse, reference life-time achievements or life-long interests?

In Memoriam considers this twist on traditional portraiture; a portrait chosen for perpetuity. Shot in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Kherson and Poltava in Ukraine over an 18 month period it surveys a range of approaches taken to solving this dilemma since the early years of the 20th Century. Through its imagery it also touches on important historical themes by documenting funerary art, including the impact of the Holocaust on Ukraine and Stalin’s enforced mass starvation in the 1930s.

In Memoriam photo book is available from Amazon UK

It was my intention to continue to develop this body of work but this project was interrupted first by Covid lockdown and then by the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In the June 2016 EU referendum, 19 constituencies voted by more than 70% to leave compared to a UK-wide average of 52%. Nine of these were on or near the east coast of England including 4 of the top 5.

I believe that in part this was a protest vote from an area of the country which has suffered economically since the late ‘60s as a result of a steep decline in tourism and the collapse of traditional industries like fishing.

While London and the Home Counties have prospered over this period, the coastal towns in eastern England have mostly stagnated suffering from under-investment, inadequate transport links and poor job prospects. They now contain some of the most deprived areas of the UK.

In addition to being a protest vote my initial thoughts to explain this overwhelming preference to leave also include a reaction to recent immigration from the EU and the Middle East and a greater sense of “Englishness” than in most major UK conurbations where the population has been cosmopolitan for much longer.

Leaving for a Dream is an ongoing project that will investigate and visually document these and other contributory factors behind the high vote to leave in east coast towns like Great Yarmouth, Grimsby, Skegness, Clacton and others and consider how they will fare in the future.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 the shock waves had a huge and lasting impact on successor countries, including Ukraine where I have travelled extensively.

The economies of most of these new countries went into free fall. Severe disruption followed as trade and commercial links between the entities of the Former Soviet Union unravelled and a market economy vied with the remnants of the defunct centrally planned system.

After almost 30 years since these Soviet Republics became independent states, vestiges of the old communist world are still very much in evidence, particularly outside the capital cities.

This series of images looks at aspects of this ongoing post-Soviet transition from the vantage point of provincial towns like Kherson in southern Ukraine where they were shot.

They were taken during the summer of 2019 and feature quiet images shot in Soviet era apartment complexes and on street corners. They mostly do not feature people but allude to their presence. This is an ongoing project that I intend to continue to shoot in other small towns in Ukraine once Covid-related travel restrictions are lifted but it has been further delayed by the tragic Russian invasion of Ukraine.

These images were taken during a visit to Cairo with my young son in the early ‘90s.

The central Cairo souk is a vibrant, colourful market place selling a bewildering range of goods and produce.

While we were there a disturbance broke out and although I never understood the full story it seems that there was a series of robberies and the police were on heightened alert.

The problem was not as bad then as it has been intervening years but there had already been terrorist attacks on areas frequented by foreign tourists and police had been deployed to protect them.

The final image in the series was not taken in the souk but near the pyramids at Giza, also showing an armed mounted tourist policeman complete with camel.

The photos were taken on Fuji 200 film using a Minolta X 700 camera, mostly with a 50mm standard lens and scanned using an Epson V800 scanner.

A chapel once served the Anglo Saxon manor and hamlet of Sugenhoe that appeared in the Domesday book of 1086. To the west of the chapel was a moated manorial castle.

There is now no physical trace of either. The chapel is simply marked with a cross and an explanatory board set in a small copse by the side of a tributary road to the A12 near Ufford, Suffolk in the UK.  

I used this site as a conceptual link to explore and respond to landscape traces and memories of Anglo Saxon history in the area, including the Sutton Hoo burial ground where Anglo Saxon King Raedwald was interred and the area around a site of what is believed to have been the great hall of King Raedwald in Rendelsham Forest. 

Shot in Metro Manila and Cebu City this visual narrative takes a look inside the sprawling cemetery cities of the Philippines that in recent years have become home to hundreds of poor migrant families.

The selection of images on this site starts with a portrayal of the fading glory of ethnic Chinese mausoleums in Manila. Shots of elaborate, painstakingly maintained tombs are then followed by images showing varying degrees of decay and distress and evidence of the people now living in these cemeteries.

Economic and demographic trends have contributed to the deterioration of these once imposing necropolises. Rapid population growth and migration from rural areas have created huge pressure on urban infrastructure and poorer families have also been displaced from make-shift shanty towns by redevelopment. With nowhere else to go, many have made their homes in these vast cemetery spaces.

The images examine aspects of this unusual coexistence of the living and the dead. Whole families live in tombs and mausoleums cheek by jowl with the dead, often sleeping on the marble slabs that cover interred bodies. Goats, ducks, fighting cocks and numerous dogs and cats add to this eclectic mix. Children are born and families live out their lives in what have become surrogate mini cities housing this bizarre combination of the living and the dead.

This is an ongoing project.

Self isolate. Don’t see friends. Don’t shake hands or embrace. Socially distance. Spend more time at home and in your garden (if you have one).

Coronavirus led to the Lockdown of the UK like much of the rest of the world. Something we have never experienced before.

A government imposing rules forbidding social interaction outside a single household unit and closing businesses, schools, universities, entertainment venues and retail units in an effort to slow the spread of the virus to save lives and prevent medical resources being overrun.

Millions of employees have been furloughed while essential workers in the NHS and elsewhere battle on at the sharp end of this pandemic, taking the strain for the nation and dealing with the sadness of suffering and death first hand.

These images record empty public spaces and dwellings that for one reason or another evoke a sense of isolation. The black and white treatment only adds to the forlorn mood.

These images are part of a shoot at Cenzo Townshend’s Decoy Recording Studios in Woodbridge, Suffolk. They were taken mostly hand held with a Contax 167 MT on Ilford HP5 film.

Cenzo was awarded 'Mix Engineer of the Year' by the Music Producers Guild Awards in 2009 and 2010 and nominated again in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Artists that have used the studio include The Maccabees, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran.

Crime is one of the seven domains that comprise the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), carrying a weighting of 9.3%. According to The English Indices of Deprivation 2025 Technical Report, ‘Crime is an important feature of deprivation that has physical, financial and psychological impacts on individuals and communities.’

Many coastal towns that have experienced economic decline score highly on the Crime Domain, which captures four major categories of crime: violence, burglary, theft and criminal damage.

The images in this gallery provide evidence of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour in coastal towns through traces of their impact on the built environment.

The sequence begins with a house near the promenade in Great Yarmouth (IMD rank 56) that appears to have been transformed into a fortress.

In contrast to the cheery bright blue of the door frame, heavy security measures dominate, suggesting a persistent fear of burglary and intrusion.

This is followed by a former small hotel in Blackpool (IMD rank 38) that has either been burgled or vandalised and is now sealed with sterling board - a familiar sight in many seaside towns.

The image also signifies a root cause of decline in seaside towns: the reduction in revenue from tourism. A building once designed to provide holiday accommodation and hospitality is now permanently closed and boarded up.

Signs of damage and repair continue in Ramsgate (IMD rank 48), where a Subway outlet has had its windows and door smashed. The boarded frontage creates a striking contrast with the business's continued operation, illustrating the challenge of trading in an environment plagued by crime and anti-social behaviour.

Boarded windows reappear in the next two images. One shows Blackpool's Edwardian Grade II listed General Post Office (IMD rank 2), standing empty while awaiting redevelopment.

The other depicts a vacant former restaurant in Grimsby (IMD rank 365) that has been broken into. Together, they reflect the vulnerability of underused buildings and struggling high streets in coastal towns.

In Ramsgate (IMD rank 3672), frustration surfaces more directly. A crudely painted slogan - ’Fuck Feds - expresses a raw, unfiltered response to the experience of decline and deprivation.

Unlike the previous images, where crime is inferred through physical damage, here discontent is voiced openly on marks on the urban landscape.

The following images shift attention to institutional responses. One features a large illuminated billboard advertising careers in the prison service in an area of Blackpool where employment deprivation is high (IMD rank 14).

The juxtaposition is difficult to ignore: a recruitment campaign for the penal system situated within a community facing limited employment opportunities and struggling with the impact of crime.

The next two images show the impact of crime and anti-social behaviour on public infrastructure. In Lowestoft (IMD rank 219), public toilets have been permanently closed following repeated vandalism.

In Great Yarmouth (IMD rank 673), basketball courts near the promenade have been locked to prevent anti-social behaviour.

In both cases, the response has been to withdraw public assets from community use.

The penultimate image offers another example of this approach. In Blackpool (IMD rank 38), a public toilet directly opposite holiday arcades and tourist amenities off Central Drive has been redesigned with prison-like architectural features intended to deter crime and misuse.

The carceral character of the structure sits uneasily within a space designed for leisure and recreation.

The sequence concludes with a stark image of a high wall topped with razor wire behind a hotel on Blackpool's promenade (IMD rank 4). The scene resembles a secure compound more than a holiday destination.

As an attempt to deter burglars, it is also a powerful visual reminder of the extent to which crime continues to shape both the physical environment and everyday experience in some of England's most deprived coastal communities.

English seaside resort towns were historically developed on the promise of health and vitality. The coast was considered a sanctuary for convalescence. Today, that geography is inverted.

Many English seaside towns and post-industrial coastal ports have become landscapes of social vulnerability. This photographic sequence maps this vulnerability, from fading coastal leisure to the realities of ill health, disability, and homelessness.

The sequence starts with an image of Great Yarmouth pier (IMD xx), where a giant teddy bear stares, sentinel-like, over the roofline of the pier under a heavy, overcast sky. Beneath the jovial veneer, a man walks in silhouette below the structure, a visual metaphor for the vulnerability and isolation that often haunt these towns out of season.

In the second image, below the signage for an amusement arcade in Margate (IMD xxx) claiming ‘entertainment for all the family’, the only evidence of activity is an elderly man pushing a female companion in a wheelchair. This panoply of holiday joy has become the backdrop for the quiet labour of physical care, a sign of the aged, often infirm, demographic of many seaside towns.

Moving away from the promenade and the sea, the landscape of the high street serves as a direct indicator of the characteristics of ‘left-behind’ seaside towns—an ageing population, social isolation, and an economy that has suffered from decades of decline and deprivation.

In the following image, captured in a Lowestoft side street, the frame is bisected by a street lamp, behind which stands a weathered street sign for ‘Beach Road’ and a banner offering ‘Companionship Services’ (IMD xx), as if to emphasise and echo the isolation evident in the opening image, and to highlight the forms of social isolation that can accompany an ageing population and the erosion of traditional support networks.

This depressed economic environment dictates not just how people live, but also what they eat. The following image shows the shuttered storefront of ‘Grill & Grind’ in Great Yarmouth (IMD xx), advertising cheap, highly processed, nutritionally deficient food, including a quarter-pounder for £1 (with or without fried onions). This is a visual signifier of a coastal food wasteland, where economic deprivation has led to a reliance on diets that contribute to obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

The physical toll of this environment is punctuated by the following image of a shopfront, also on Great Yarmouth High Street (IMD xx), prominently advertising ‘LARGER SIZES AVAILABLE / 2XL–5XL’, a commercial signifier of localised health trends.

To cope with this reality of decline and deprivation, a pub signboard (IMD xx) advertises escapism in the form of double shots of spirits for £3. Alcohol dependency and related health problems are a major issue in many seaside towns: Blackpool has the highest alcohol-specific mortality rate for men in Britain and the second-highest for women.

The following image pivots away from shopfront evidence towards the psychological undercurrents of the community. Spray painted across a construction hoarding in an empty urban space just behind Southend promenade (IMD xx), the words ‘CALL IN SICK’ serve as a cynical commentary on societal well-being.

This outward frustration turns inward in the following image. Scratched on the inside of a public toilet in Harwich are the words: ‘Raymonds daddy is dead... Raymonds daddy waz a crack head’, a testament to intergenerational trauma, substance dependency, and mental illness.

The following image pair demonstrates how disability and ageing have become the physical norm in many seaside towns. In the first, a woman on a mobility scooter drives past a row of old telephone boxes outside the boarded-up windows of the Grade II-listed former GPO building in central Blackpool (IMD xx), demonstrating visually how physical disability coexists with civic and structural decay.

The scale of this demographic reality is laid bare in the following image, also in Blackpool, showing a tightly packed ‘fleet’ of mobility scooters, resembling an informal transport depot (IMD xx). Mobility aids are no longer an occasional exception for the infirm; they have become part of the primary infrastructure of daily life in many seaside towns.

The sequence culminates in two images of homelessness in Grimsby. In the first, physical disability and poverty converge outside a shopping centre in the town centre (IMD xx). A rough sleeper lies wrapped in a red sleeping bag next to his wheelchair.

The image captures the porosity of the social safety net, illustrating the reality faced by people who are both mobility-impaired and homeless—literally outside in the cold.

The final image shifts the focus of this survival struggle to a damp pedestrian underpass (IMD xx). Here, bedding is laid out against the wall alongside a peeling civic mural celebrating the heritage of ‘Great Grimsby’ and its 1201 charter.

This final juxtaposition lays bare a tragic irony: the painted memories of a prosperous past are flaking from the wall, while vulnerable individuals are forced to sleep below it on the concrete floor. Once sought as a haven and a cure for illness, the coast has itself become a site of chronic neglect.