8:17am Wednesday 7th October 2009
By Jim Greenhalf
An exhibition of photographs of Northern rock stars currently on at Salts Mill spans 30 years and brings together two generations.
Taken by Kevin Cummins, for ten years the New Musical Express’s top snapper, the pictures show, among others, Oasis, The Happy Mondays, The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order and The Fall.
The exhibition, evocatively entitled Manchester: Looking For The Light Through The Pouring Rain, is based on a new book of Cummins’s work.
The show itself was borrowed from Manchester’s Richard Goodall Gallery, and is organised for Salts Mill by Davina Silver.
She is the younger of the two daughters of Jonathan and Maggie Silver – the late owner and the current owner, respectively, of the mill arts and business complex.
Davina and her sister Zoe found out that a series of photographs of Joy Division by Cummins had been taken in Jonathan Silver’s Art & Furniture shop in Manchester in January, 1979, five months before Davina was born. She wanted to buy one for her mum’s 60th birthday.
Davina, Bryan Ferry’s PA until this summer, said: “I e-mailed Kevin and that’s how we’ve ended up where we are today. Kevin remembers Dad being around when the photos were taken and has told me how much they all loved going to his shops.
“Kevin also had several pieces of clothing from Jonathan Silver Clothes. I think it’s incredible that now, 30 years after the photos of Joy Division were taken, they’ve ended up at the mill.
“I’m using the roof space to offset these amazing black and white photos. I think the powerful images of the musicians combined with the magnitude of the space do all the work.”
Kevin remembers taking the Joy Division pictures on a snowy day in January, 1979.
He said: “Because I was worried that the pictures (for New Musical Express) would date with snow in them, I decided to take some indoors. I had been going into Art & Furniture quite a bit. So I went into the shop to shelter from the snow. Jonathan was somebody we knew anyway because he was a face in Manchester.”
Silver’s other Manchester emporium, Jonathan Silver Clothes, was popular with the in-crowd too, as Kevin Cummins revealed.
“My sister Julie worked part-time for Jonathan in his clothes shop. Ian Curtis bought his wedding suit there. I bought my suit there when I was my brother’s best man. It was pistachio green and white. The lapels almost reached the edge of the shoulders. The flares were very wide.”
If Kevin cares to stop off in Bradford next time he’s going to Saltaire, he could have fish and chips at the Inn Plaice, at the bottom of Sunbridge Road. In the 1970s that was the Bradford branch of Jonathan Silver Clothes.
Manchester: Looking For The Light Through Pouring Rain, is on at Salts Mill until Friday, October 16.
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