Sheffield Photographs 1988-1992

Publishers description

In 1988 Untitled Gallery launched the Sheffield Project. Entitled ‘Regeneration’, this was an extensive three-year project that involved several photographic commissions to document the significant changes that were taking place in the city. Berris Conolly was awarded one of the first commissions and decided to focus primarily on the industrial heartland of the Lower Don Valley, which had become a scene of partially cleared brownfield sites and ongoing demolition.

The project culminated in 1991 with a major exhibition, timed to coincide with the staging of the World Student Games in Sheffield, and which featured the work of all the photographers. It was shown in several galleries across the city. A retrospective show of the work is now scheduled for exhibition at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield.

Born in 1948, Berris Conolly worked in commercial photography until 1984 when he gave this up to concentrate on independent documentary practice. Living in Hackney at the time, he spent several years extensively recording the borough with a medium format camera, and in 2014 this work was published by Dewi Lewis as Hackney Photographs 1985-1987. Berris moved from London to Sheffield at the end of 1988 to work on the commission for Untitled Gallery. He is still based in the city and still actively photographing; his latest project ‘One Mile’ permiting him to only take pictures within a one mile radius of his home.