BUST - The Art of Recession.

Around a recession-bled Britain, high-street businesses have been going bust in their thousands.

From a continuing piece of work about windows and urban messages, Richard Baker has been looking afresh at the façades of our local shops that are now falling victim to this credit crunched economy.

Napoleon called the...
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BUST - The Art of Recession.

Around a recession-bled Britain, high-street businesses have been going bust in their thousands.

From a continuing piece of work about windows and urban messages, Richard Baker has been looking afresh at the façades of our local shops that are now falling victim to this credit crunched economy.

Napoleon called the English 'a nation of shopkeepers' but we are seeing the hopes and dreams of our shop owners who have historically shouldered all that the Luftwaffe and IRA have thrown at them, now yielding to these latest financial bombardments. After the shelves groan their last under the weight of over-ordered stock, so the liquidators move in and staff are given notice to leave.

Searching for these victims might seem a ghoulish vocation but these vertical landscapes of white-washed glass masks the financial and personal tragedies within: It is a documentary about once-proud retailers whose ambitions of ownership and self-reliance are over.

The writings on these windows may be left by the last one to turn out the lights, the ghostly traces of an employee's last day at work. Some messages suggest a desperation, others have an acute disappointment at the loss of their jobs. There is sadness and irony but humour too.

Shopping populations move on disloyally to inward-facing malls where the huge chains and mega brands lurk. But although foreclosures and lost dreams seem so final - hope is the embodiment for our businessmen and women. The economy will in fact recover quickly and new businesses will rise again.

Copyright Richard Baker 2009.
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