Closing time

“This is a personal project which has been going on for years. It emerged out of another one, “Roadside Britain”, which is just things of interest I catch sight of on the move. Some of these images were found that way too, but with a difference—I began to find that some of the pictures weren’t just about places but also about character.”

“We’re all used to retail; it’s something we are all comfortable with. And it is a great measure of how the world changes. Finding these fascinating places is a recognition of history, architecture and character. The thing is, these shopkeepers’ special knowledge is going to disappear with them. ”

“I grew up in Winchester in the 1960s. My mother was very keen on shopping and we were always going to shops like these: Winchester was that kind of town. This was before the march of the chain, when supermarkets were tiny and not out of town in retail parks. The only big shops were department stores and Winchester had three of them, all independent. The brand-new Sainsbury’s I went to as a child wouldn’t even qualify as a convenience store nowadays.”

“I remember being in department stores and being told to 'wait here, sit still', and feeling the temptation to run wild, have adventures. When you’re little you see everything from a low angle and so you always see the underneath of the racked-up clothes or whatever the stock is. I never did have those adventures but I can remember wanting to—the full-length mirrors reflecting the underworld…”

“My father is a travelling salesman, still working now at 79. In the 1950s he sold groceries, then furniture and clocks. He used to go to America and Europe, which was unusual then, and that feel for travel is in me too. I love moving.”

“I worry terribly about missing shops: they disappear so fast. So I am dependent on recommendations. Everyone knows an old hardware shop or shoe shop, but it’s the more obscure sort I worry about most: drapers, taxidermists, that kind of thing. A sense of loss is partly what drives me.”

“My bread-and-butter work is portraiture, for magazines mostly. My biggest influence is probably Martin Parr, who taught me at college. I also like Terry Frost and Franco Fontana. But the key reference would have to be the photographer Paul Graham and his seminal work “A1”. And although I’m not really influenced by painting, I used to have some framed Hopper prints on my wall. That feeling of enclosed space and nostalgia does play a part in my work.”

“I recently did an electrical-accessories shop in Sidcup, just off the A2, and from the floor to the ceiling there were old plugs and lengths of flex. There was something about the look of the place and the way the shopkeeper had everything to hand, an incredible stock of old lightbulbs and batteries and all that. Very compelling, that interior. I loved being in there. I see the shops and the people as an indivisible whole.”

“And there’s nothing so much fun as a shop that’s not open, on half-day closing. When you find one of those, you know you’re in the right place. I make a note of it and come back when I’m next passing through the area.”

“Do I think we’re a nation of shopkeepers, in Napoleon’s phrase? No, not any more. But we once were. Tesco and the internet have turned us into a nation of shoppers, which is a different thing altogether.” ~ NICK COLEMAN