Tales from the Loop
Tales from the Loop is a photographic investigation into a single, recurring walk — a short loop near Oxford Rd in Manchester, made up of transient, overlooked spaces. Designed to be used, not dwelled in, the area functions as a passage between places of greater perceived importance: shops, bars, bus stops, work.
Through black and white, square-format images, the work explores how repetition, constraint, and time can shift perception. Taken across changing light, weather, and emotional states, the photographs reflect a quiet accumulation — not of events, but of atmospheres. Presence and absence drift in and out of frame. The project treats observation as ritual, and space as something both fixed and continually altered by movement, mood, and memory.
Tales from the Loop – Bloom Exhibition, Manchester Metropolitan University
Presented at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Bloom exhibition, Tales from the Loop brings together photography, painting, and writing in a collaborative exploration of one fixed urban route. Working with writer Sarah Neder and painter Rob Jones, the project examines how repetition and return can transform the familiar into something speculative — a shared landscape of memory, observation, and quiet unease.
The installation featured a 50x50-inch brushed aluminium print, vinyl wall text of Neder’s poem, and oil paintings on folded paper maps of Manchester by Jones. Each medium reinterpreted the same walk through its own language, creating an immersive dialogue between image, word, and surface.
