Return Journey - ACE112.5

Derek Smith arriving at North Shields. Tyneside, on the ferry; commentary explains that he was born (in 1954) "into … that New Britain of welfare and wartime hopes" and that "photography was an important influence" in his aspirations. Smith’s VO says that a visit to an exhibition of the work of Bill Brandt at Middlesbrough made him want to become a photographer. Photographs by Brandt. Local views, Smith walking to his house. Smith at home, talking about living and studying in London at the age of nineteen, says that being able to compare and contrast north and south was very important. Film of people in Oxford Street, London, intercut with a photograph of a group of foundry workers from around 1910 in a sequence of montages – in Trafalgar Square, in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace, etc. – called The Lads’ Day Out, which Smith made at college. He talks about how this sequence reflected his initial reaction to London. Smith crossing a railway footbridge outside North Shields. Commentary says that, on his first journey home from London, he "found his relationship to the community he had left had unexpectedly changed". Smith VO explains his reactions; photographs he took at the time intercut with current conditions; he points out that his work documented the decline of the area. He talks about the two elderly women he photographed sitting on a street corner, who, he discovered, knew his grandfather. South Bank (1975) shows a shirtless man on a "mid-summer afternoon, waiting for the newspapers to arrive".