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Ian and his camera

Recently, Ian's photos reflecting many different aspects of life along the Calder went on show at Halifax's Piece Hall, but anyone going along to the exhibition expecting to see pictures of nice scenery was in for something of a surprise. Ian explains: "If you look at the pictures you normally see of rivers they are all based on the picturesque. It's always the river winding away into the distance. It's very pleasant but it's often seen…What I was interested in was exploring movement and light. With movement, particularly if you start using long exposures, multi-exposures, fast exposures, the camera produces an image that the eye doesn't actually see and that's the thing that really fascinates me. When you get the light sparkling on water, depending on how you photograph it, you can get quite startling images. It's an exploration of the fact that to some extent you are shooting blind because often you don't know the results until you actually see the thing.

Ian believes that the river is now much cleaner than it's been for a very long time: "If you read some accounts of it even in the 1950s it was so grossly polluted. You wouldn't possibly want to go swimming in it – and with the summer we've had not a lot of people would want to go swimming in it – but I was out there the other week when we had some fine weather and it's interesting how many people do go and enjoy the river." At Sowerby Bridge Ian came across some young boys who told him they had been messing about in the river all summer – one of them had even caught a trout – yet their parents had advised them not to go in the river: "Within living memory the river has actually changed, and I think to some extent the relationship we have with the rivers has probably changed for the better." In fact, Ian's Artist is Residency is part of a multi-million pound programme to clean up Yorkshire's rivers.

The river in full colour!

Ian believes that Yorkshire Water are also are working to give people greater access to their properties. Recently they've been developing walks to people get more enjoyment out of reservoirs and rivers. A particular favourite of Ian's is a walk along the River Ryburn - a tributary of the Calder - near Ripponden.

'Exploring movement and light' along the Calder...

"A lot of the work I do is directly about the things that affect me. There's a big body of work (which I'm still continuing) about the demise of industrial society. I worked in industry when I left school, my parents did, my grandparents did, so it's always fascinated me. And if you look at industrial society then you start to look at the community at large, you start to look at the social aspects which brings you to my other great love, football, and other bits of social life, clubbing and things." Ian adds: "When you are living in the north of England the industrial landscape has such an effect but that can move you into the rural landscape. I don't see it as all sorts of different subjects. I see it as absolutely interconnected. When I hang up the camera at the end of the day I hope it's quite a coherent body of work."

On top of the world or rather the Humber Bridge!

"A really beautiful black and white print has a certain quality. I make the distinction that photography is all to do with emulsions and wet processing and digital imagery is digital imagery. People call it digital photography but I think it's digital imagery. The best analogy I've come up with is it's like comparing watercolours with oils. It's intrinsically the same medium - it's a two-dimensional reproduction of the world or your imagination - but they are two quite separate things and I don't think one would ever quite supercede the other." For Ian the photographic image has depth while the digital image is made up of pixels on a flat surface.

Ian back where he began at Esholt treatment works!

Of course, Ian has not only been thinking about water! His role as Course Leader for the MA in International Photojournalism, Documentary and Travel Photography at the University of Bolton has even taken him to China. He's also Artist in Residence with the union Amicus and he's published a book on the closure of a Sheffield steelworks: "I worked with all the men there and we did a lot of work together. A lot of the work I'm doing in industry has moved slightly more to being a partnership with the people there as opposed to just being a photographer because the terminology of photography is to TAKE a photograph. It's like a one-sided transaction." Consequently when he went along to a Doncaster tractor factory which was due to close Ian says he told the workers he was there to CREATE photos: "I wanted a two-sided transaction."