Middlesbrough railway station is a building I frequently pass through as I commute to and from the town on a weekly basis. When I first began thinking about the Most Creative Station commission, I was struck by how on one level the station feels very familiar to me and yet I knew nothing about its history. It has just come to form part of the background of my daily life. I am always fascinated by how little we often know about the places we inhabit. I began to look more closely and wondered what stories the building held.
Searching through old photographs of the station, at first online and then in various archives, I was able to see the station as it has existed over the last 150 years, from early black and white images to full technicolour prints. The archival photographs document the obvious changes that had occurred over time, such as shifts in fashion and the impact of technological developments but they are also surprisingly similar in relation to what they capture – people waiting, trains arriving and trains departing. The one constant fixture in all of the images is the station buildings, which stand solidly as a permanent backdrop to the otherwise transient nature of the place.
Alongside researching photographic images, I also explored the station itself, discovering inaccessible, unused and hidden spaces. From the old Station Master’s living quarters tucked away in the attic, unoccupied for many years with the peeling paint and empty coat hooks speaking of former habitation, to the scars left behind following a Second World War bombing raid that destroyed the grand elliptical roof that once spanned the two platforms.
The final film work produced, stands as a portrait of the building, seamlessly weaving together archival and contemporary imagery, in which still photographs are interspersed with footage of architectural features that define the distinct visual identity of the station – the ornate iron work on the platforms, the decorative stone work on the exterior, and the colourful tiled floors of the interiors.
Steam is a central feature of the film, referencing the origins of the railway and the power behind the development of the industry that fuelled the economic growth of Middlesbrough in the 19th century. In 1830, the Middlesbrough Branch of the Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened. This expansion of the world’s first steam driven public railway line, revolutionised the transport system and transformed the region.
As a material, steam’s transient qualities are employed in the film, enabling imagery to appear and disappear as images from different points in time dissolve into one another. This sense of moving through time is reminiscent of how steam would once map the journeys of locomotives, leaving a temporary trace in the air as they moved through the landscape.
This atmosphere of the film spills out into the wider space as a plume of steam, loosely based on 19th century etchings wraps around the surrounding glass panelling and windows of the Ticket Hall, lingering in the space in the same way platforms would have been filled with a haze of steam through which arriving passengers would emerge.
Blog post written by Catherine Bertola reflecting on the development of her commission ‘And ever again…’ for Middlesbrough’s Most Creative Station programme.
Install photographs by Rachel Deakin