30 years on from his first visit Photographer Rob Clayton has returned to the estate that gave him inspiration as a student. The non-descript Black Country high-rise flats could have been anywhere but it was Oldbury that Clayton happened upon in 1990 and it is here that he has returned to revisit its residents.
“In 1990, as a student photographer, Lion Farm Estate chose me.
On a chance visit, the sheer scale of the tower blocks and their bleak setting grabbed my attention – aesthetically and emotionally. I was looking for an estate that I could photograph that would convey my experience of the ordinariness of daily working-class life but equally, I was fascinated by topography and post-war architecture. The estate was both familiar, in the sense I grew up in a large low rise council estate in the Midlands, and exciting, as it was unfamiliar, new to me, strange and offered much to explore.
That was almost thirty years ago, and years later, in 2015, I published a book entitled ‘Estate’ of this early work; this was the catalyst that has led me back to Lion Farm once again; a wiser, older middle-aged photographer – but just as curious and concerned as ever for the plight of the working class. When commissioned by Multistory to photograph the area a generation later, I was determined to document again, in a balanced, inquisitive, and respectful manner, a visual representation of the underrepresented.
The outcomes of my photography I cannot predict, but I hope to offer a window into everyday life; viewers can make up their own minds. In one small section of an English conurbation, all of life’s drama unfolds in a community that both struggles and is abundant in spirit. Resilience and hope remain as the working class “gets by” whilst beaten by the ideology of austerity; Lion Farm is no exception, a planned community, born out of a more egalitarian era where politicians valued the social contract with the people. Lion Farm is “getting by”.”
