444 Former Filling Stations
Images
The selection of black and white photographs on this website are part of an archive of 444 Former Filling Stations, made by Frank Eye in six months of winter in 2005-6. Frank travelled about England, following routes he once knew, and asking people on the way to remember where they used to buy petrol. He then located and identified the sites and recorded them in their varying states of transformation or neglect.
Rather than the before and after images of mass media and advertising, these photographs capture the lapse between states, during the process of change. The bleak urban landscapes are a contrast with more optimistic times past and are an autobiographical reflection of the artist’s own experience of being made redundant, prior to taking up conceptual photography.
When the rapid change of demolition and redevelopment can play tricks with memory, these photographs fix for posterity the ephemeral state of filling stations across the country. Sites sit vacant, in property portfolios, awaiting the diggers. Garages are demolished and replaced by new roads, high-density housing or convenience stores. Former Filling Stations records these states of flux and stasis in a typology of transience and loss.
Click here for a small selection of unpublished images from the archive
For a free image to download for private use, go to Downloads
For anecdotes on the process of researching the images, go to Anecdotes
For images from other work by Frank Eye, go to About/CV
Artist's prints of thirty images, on archival matte paper, are available for purchase at the exhibitions.
All images are available on high resolution files for commercial use. Please contact Frank Eye's agent C.A.Hadfield on chas.had@virgin.net
To send in your own Filling Station image, go to Downloads