LONDON.- Photographed between 1978 and 1983, The Harbour chronicles a period of significant change for Bristol’s harbourside. One of Jem Southam’s first major projects, his photographs systematically document the loss and regeneration, reflective of the wider experience in Britain at this time.

The port has been a central hub of Bristol since Roman Times, and the ‘Floating Harbour’, impounding water from the tidal Avon was opened in 1809. By the late 1960s -1970s, the end of its working life left behind a sculptural presence surrounded by the disused and decaying dockland fabric—cranes, bridges, pump-houses, warehouses, offices, railways, terraced houses and ship-building yards. It is this infrastructure which Southam documents in The Harbour, in a brief period before redevelopment accelerated. Using a large-plate camera, he created an archival record of over 1000 photographs of the architectural landscape.

Southam’s grandfather, Harry Cottrell, spent his working life in the Bristol docks as a shipping clerk, overseeing the arrival, unloading and distribution of guano and other such commodities from an office in Queens Square. As a result, when Southam began work at Arnolfini on Narrow Quay in 1977, the city docks held a special meaning for him, despite knowing very little of their workings or histories.

'Most of the pictures were made on Sunday mornings. Five days a week I was working at Arnolfini, and on Saturday I ran a small photographic gallery in Clifton with a friend. So I woke up early every Sunday and peeked out the window, if the weather looked promising I would be out on my cow-horned handled bicycle, a rickety Velborn tripod over one shoulder and a strong postman’s canvas bag with a 5x4 MPP camera, lens and six dark-slides over the other, cycling down from Cotham to the docks to find some pictures. I rarely met a soul. The docks were empty.‘

Southam photographed sites including Bathhurst Basin, Welsh Back, Cumberland Basin, and Narrow Quay alongside sets of pictures of specific types of dockland furniture – the cranes, the pumphouses, the bridges. Studies were made of individual buildings and their setting, and then further pictures were made of these buildings into the wider landscape.

‘Would we all not be fascinated to be transported briefly back to an earlier era of the docks life, to the hustle and bustle, the noise, the smells as many ships came and left daily, delivering and picking up cargoes right in the middle of the city.’

Born in Bristol in 1950, Jem Southam’s work is housed in major collections including Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum Folkwang, Essen; and the Yale Center for British Art, Newhaven. His work has been the subject of numerous international solo exhibitions notably, Tate St Ives (2004), V&A Museum, London (2006) and The Lowry, Salford (2009).