Portsmouth ..... Anyone Going There?

What it is; I'm having a blast here! I'll do my best to 'Cut to the Chase'. But, it's a bit involvedish ~ or just a straight head fuck, if ye don't grasp the concept. Only, I bought a whole 750MB CD of photo's of Portsmouth, off some guy on the Bay.

Yeppers. So He's obviously well fucked in the head for possessing such a mind bendingly fucking humongous collection of photo's of a city. True, actually. The guy explained, in his profile, that he was ex of Portsmouth ~ and suffered clinical depression. Poor, sick bastard. Most people I ever knew, who were clinically depressed, were so because they were still in fucking Portsmouth!

Anyway, I'm neither in that shit hole, nor am I depressed. See above; I'm having a whale of a time. And it's all to do with thousands of photo's of Portsmouth. The place I hate. I don't 'Love To Hate' it. I just fucking despise the place. I spent most of my life there. I learned good.

However ~ and here ye need to pay a bit of attention; I'm into this Genealogy (Family History shit) and I recognise the value of seeing images of where ye people lived. Many of mine lived around Portsmouth from about 1800. Generations of them lived in a street which was demolished just before I was old enough to think for myself. I've never seen that street. Probably never will. It'd be my dying wish to see an image of it.

So, being the sort of guy I am, and having found no such image amongst the thousands I have here, I've been on a mission to make other peoples dreams come true. I offer my images, free as fuck, to anyone else on the Genealogical fora I go to.

Tell ye; I've had a couple of people ask me, recently, for shots of places. One was a church that was demolished back in the 20's or 30's. Her mother had been married there, or something. Another guy wanted HMP Portsmouth. I only managed to dig out both the shots! These people were so fucking grateful, there were tear stains on their e mails. I'd made their days. That shit makes my day. I like making people happy.

Please bear this in mind, if ye ever visit Portsmouth. I have shots from the fuck knows when's, right up to the 90's. But, that place changes like a kaleidoscope and I haven't got a fraction of it covered yet. If I still lived there ~ and so, by definition, hadn't killed myself yet ~ I'd be out every day, with my camera. I'd follow every damn road on a street map and would snap shots of Everything.

A side street. A chip shop. A patch of waste ground (As if That could exist there these days!) I'd grab the lot. Any and everything. Walk along a road between A and B? Camera out and just grab a shot of that mundane, boring, motor filled fucking road. Label it. Pubs. Corners. Anything.

Because this is the shit that people look back on. Look for. And no viewable record will exist, most of the time. Not of the less colourful or glamorous shit. Does the street where You lived feature on any 'Guide' to your home town? I doubt it.

So, that's the craic. I'm hungry for shots of any and everything Portsmouth and there abouts. Nothing can be too mundane. Jesus christ; I'd take shots of public loo's! Those things have been getting closed down most of my living memory. Once they're gone? And yet, some poor fucker probably spent years of their life cleaning the places. See how the weirdest shit can matter to someone, thirty years from now?

And that's my project. I have thousands of shots. I'm up all night trying to identify and catalogue them. When I'm done, I'll hand the lot over to the local archives. Meanwhile, my shots end in the 80's, 90's. I'd love to expand my collection to show what shit looks like now, in the 10's. I'd also like just more shots of how streets and roads look. Anywhere ye happen to be walking or step out of ye motor ~ I mean; No cunt walks these days, do they ....?

No more than anyone passes through Portsmouth, if they can help it. But, if ye do? Grab me a card full of any and everything, will ye? I don't need 'Art'. I want 'Japanese'. Click like a muvva fukka. Just make damn sure to record where the hell it is! I almost certainly wouldn't recognise it now!

Thankyou.