‘I couldn’t resist taking this picture’ … Alec Gill on his shot of a boy in a laundrette, taken 30 August 1978.Over 16 years, photographer Alec Gill witnessed the changing landscape of Hull’s Hessle Road and its community. The project began in 1971. Gill drew up a boundary map and stuck to it conscientiously
‘This is a photograph of freezer trawler the Dane H144 in the William Wright Dock. I must admit to being a bit scared whenever I went down into the deep and ginormous graving dock. I imagined that the leaking lock gates might suddenly burst open wide, and enormous volumes of water would surge. I did not fancy being bashed around in the dock alongside the 1,480-tonne massive Hull trawler’
Gill: ‘Sometimes, when I set off on my bike to photograph Hessle Road, I thought of a theme for that session – for example, the fish dock, pubs, corner shops or kids playing on the streets. More often than not, something would happen and I would get distracted by another theme, and that would take up the full afternoon. In this image, I was struck by the gaudy adverts outside this supermarket.