This image is of a dolls head sitting on the floor of a derelict house. Derelict houses have always fascinated me. Who lived there? What did they do? Why did they go? It’s about the ghosts of those who have gone before.

During my life there have been a couple of opportunities for me to gain access to old properties.
Firstly when I worked in the building industry in Birmingham. It was in the early 1960’s. At that time Birmingham was clearing its inner city slums (I was born in one such in Nechells near to the Gas works). Thousands of Victorian houses were being cleared and being replaced, arguably with modern versions. That aside, I had access to houses that had been swept away, though their cellars were still available to me.
On a site in Curzon St., we were building a Centre for Public lighting* over what was once rows of early 19thC houses**. Much of was once the superstructure had just been dumped in the cellars we were digging through. In thre cellars of a demolished house in Summer Lane, Newtown, we discovered thousands of unfinished Mother of Pearl buttons and the shells from which they were being punched – obviously a button factory.
Secondly when I worked as a Property Surveyor in Leicestershire, Bristol, Bath and Birmingham. Every day I would be asked to inspect an empty house somewhere, though in the main they were not totally derelict. I saw some amazing houses, from rows of ex miners cottages with tin baths in the kitchen for bathing to the grandest houses with dozens of bedrooms and bathrooms and vast cellars.
It was only later in life I started taking pictures of derelict buildings.

Notes on above
*Itself knocked down in my living memory to be replaced with the Museum in Curzon St. Yes, Birmingham really does change that quickly.

**it wasn’t until nearly 60 years later that I discovered my Great Grandfather had lived in those very houses.