Abrush with glamour in the 'invisible city'

SOME would have graced the cover of a Smiths album perfectly. They capture a city in turmoil and the people living through it with grit and humour.

- NEAL KEELING

A young woman in a classic pink dress with black going-out shoes sweeping the cobbles of a Salford street with a broom in 1969.

But she was not posing – just cleaning outside her home with the Poet’s Corner pub in the background of the Lower Broughton scene.

A pristine looking red-bricked Church Inn is pictured in Ellor Street in 1976. The traditional boozer proudly survives next to the city’s brave new world – high rise blocks – and a plot of cleared land.

Pictured in atmospheric black and white a rain-drenched street in 1971 looking like a Coronation Street set with a solitary woman walking on a pavement shining from the downpour.

The images are in an exhibition at Salford Museum and Art Gallery called ‘Invisible Cities’.

It focuses on the transformation of the city from 1952 to 1974 when terraced houses and neighbourhoods were being swept away and replaced with modern architecture. Images taken and provided by local citizens, professional photographers, and stills from TV and film, alongside architectural drawings and illustrations are featured.

The exhibition is part of a University of Salford research project which explores the redevelopment of Salford. The images show how its citizens documented their own history but also reveal how a modern Salford was planned by architects and town hall bosses as well as how its ‘slum clearance’ was captured by film and TV makers.