3300

On Saturday 15th June 1996 the Irish Republican Army detonated a 3300lb lorry bomb on Corporation Street, city centre Manchester. The vernacular/found photographs of this edition — presented here as facsimile versions of the original prints — were discovered by Nirvana Heire during the electrical decommissioning of the Rylands Building, Market Street, Manchester in November 2022. These thirty-nine granular, unpolished images possess a cinemtic aspect: panoptic views of trashed cityscapes against close-up damage to shop fronts. While the abstracted, spare and repetitive nature of these snapshots offers a stark rumination on the structural defacement wreaked upon the metropolis. A lack of human presence throughout much of the work, allied to an absence of authorial background, impart a singularly uncanny tone. The easy typological platitues of found-photography publications are jettisoned; 3300 is stripped back to its barest essentials. In an era of overwrought book design this work is sparse, angular and thoughtful. Nirvana Heire is an artist living and working in Manchester. An electrician and founder member of the bands Handle and DUDS, 3300 is his first photobook.