PENDLEBURY POWER STATION - John Davies 1983

Durham-born John Davies is internationally known for the lucidity with which he tackles the rural and urban landscape. He began in the mid 1970s with a prolonged analysis of the wild beauty and breadth of the natural landscape within Britain. In the 1980s he documented urban Britain, concentrating on the changes provoked by the industrial and post-industrial landscape.

Since the mid 1980s, he has looked at the landscape of European countries.
Davies's work belongs to the world of contemporary documentary photography.

He chooses the vastness of space inhabited by the powerful elements of nature and investigates the impact of industrialisation, particularly coal mining, textiles, steel, quarrying, railways and shipping.

Electricity brings comfort and work but the cost of its production can be pollution and a gloomy landscape. Perhaps this is how people will remember late 20th century views - as bleak and uninspiring. What kind of air are the otherwise healthy young footballers breathing in? How will it affect them in the future?

Coal from the nearby Agecroft colliery was used to create power here but this is a very smoky source of energy. Now we rarely use coal and are looking into non-polluting sources such as wind, wave and solar energy. In the nearby painting ' Night's Candles are Burnt Out', a dam is being constructed to create hydro-electricity, a non-polluting energy source.

Wind turbines are another way of providing clean energy. Would you accept one being built near where you live?

John Davies Meet me. Meet me down by the power station meet me down by the cooling towers I've got something I want to tell you, meet me down by the cooling towers, this evening, this evening.

Meet me down by the great pyramids, meet me down by the oasis where the water's pure and the air is clean.

Meet me down by the fields where the lads play football and spend their energy in the mucky, gloomy atmosphere, meet me down by the canal, meet me down by the mucky water, I've got something I want to tell you, I've got something I want to tell you, I've got something I want to tell you.

Meet me down by the power station meet me down by the cooling towers meet me this evening meet me, meet me, it will be bad for your health if you don't show, I've got something I want to tell you.