The MANCHESTER & SALFORD TAKE AWAY MENU ARCHIVE

Yet again I’ve been struck by how, in our working lives, we share space with people about whom we know very little beyond the job they do. Each one of us has a hinterland about which others know so little, nowhere more so perhaps than here at the gallery where almost everybody is involved in some kind of creative practice beyond their day job.

A recent conversation with Mark Page, who works in the Visitor Services team at Manchester Art Gallery, in which we discussed a shared interest in photographing the hidden urban landscapes of the city, revealed Mark as a long-time photographer of the urban environment in all it’s hues and manifestations. His inclusive and non-judgemental vision takes in the less polished, less marketed, often hidden, often scoured, marked or damaged faces of this city full of inequalities.

Of particular relevance here though, is Mark’s ongoing project to document the relentless flow of take away menus that ‘build up behind the door like a techno-coloured snowdrift.’ As an unofficial archive of the unremarked everyday ephemera that we daily ignore, it’s a real treat.

See The MANCHESTER & SALFORD TAKE AWAY MENU ARCHIVE here.

Martin