England: A Portrait of Oldham by Mishka Henner & Liz Lock (36 images)

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A frontier town in more ways than one, Oldham is struggling to redefine itself in the shadow of a golden age of textile production. Derelict mills, warehouses and rows of neglected housing litter a landscape perched on the edge of the Pennines. But Oldham is on a social knife-edge too, with cultural fault lines formed between the white working-class population and communities from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and parts of the Caribbean.

In May 2001, tensions between these neighbouring communities erupted into some of the worst racially motivated riots the UK has seen. Eight years on, despite efforts by local and national government to bring investment to the area and increase community cohesion, the town remains divided. The far-right British National Party (BNP) has polled up to 16% in Oldham, and in 2009 leader Nick Griffin was elected a Member of the European Parliament representing the local region.

The rise in popularity of the BNP takes place against a backdrop of fear, suspicion and economic hardship. As in other post-industrial towns around Britain, the shift to a service-based economy has left many of the workforce in long-term unemployment. At the same time, relations between police and the area's Muslim communities are rapidly deteriorating in the light of highly-publicised and failed anti-terrorism operations targeting young Muslim men.

In summer 2007 we spent some time in the Local Studies and Archives looking through Oldham's vast collection of photographs spanning the 20th century. We picked out images that interested us and kept them in a folder, not revisiting them until almost 18 months later when our own body of work was complete and editing for an ensuing exhibition began.

Unfortunately, many of the old photographs have little or no caption information. What remains is a loose collective of people, poses and landscapes that lay in the back of our minds and perhaps acted as a subconscious guide on our own photographic journey through Oldham.
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