I shoot most of my urban landscape work on an iPhone now, and a derelict block above Market Street East in Newcastle is a good example of why. I was crossing the footbridge over the A167, the one that links Newcastle to Manors, and stopped when I saw the flats below, their panels still painted in fading blue, green, yellow and lilac against a flat grey sky.

Why a Phone, Not a Rig

A phone is the right tool for a shot like this. There’s no room on a footbridge for a tripod, and setting one up on a public right of way like that would have been a bad idea in any case. I used the wide lens to hold the full façade and the Tyne Bridge in the same frame, working handheld and relying on the phone’s own stabilisation, and locked the exposure manually so the shot didn’t shift every time a cloud passed or a car moved below.

There’s a practical reason for shooting this way beyond convenience, too. A phone doesn’t read as filming to anyone passing by, which matters on a footbridge in the middle of the day. I could stand there working through the shot for a while without becoming the thing people were looking at, which is exactly what you want when the building is the subject, not you.

A Faded Mural, Not a Housing Block

Up close the colour does something strange to a building that’s clearly empty. Some windows are boarded, others smashed through, and graffiti has crept up the lower panels. The overall effect is closer to a faded mural than a housing block, decay and colour sitting together in a way that felt worth stopping for.

This stretch of Market Street dates back to the early twentieth century. Plummer House, close by, was built around 1910, and Carliol House followed in 1924 to 1927 for the North Eastern Electric Supply Company, with an Art Deco front and, in its day, electric lifts. Most of the interior is gone now, but the shell still carries something of that early confidence.

Having the Tyne Bridge in the same frame as the derelict flats felt right for that reason. Its arch opened in 1928, and it’s Grade II* listed now. Ninety years of Newcastle’s building history, held together in one shot, from the optimism of the 1920s to whatever comes next for a row of flats that clearly won’t be standing much longer.

It would be easy to walk past a building like this without a second look. But there’s more going on in these walls than simple decline, a kind of visual record of a city changing shape, still legible if you know to stop and look properly, and increasingly something a phone in your pocket is enough to capture well.

You can see more from this ongoing series on my Newcastle & Gateshead Landscapes Instagram.

It is one of a handful of times I have turned the camera on an empty Newcastle building rather than a finished project, in the same spirit as Filming First, Checking the Story Later: The Oxford Galleries, Newcastle, where I filmed the old Oxford Galleries on New Bridge Street.