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Book specifications:
Hardback 265 x 210mm (Landscape)
240 pages printed 4/4 on 170gsm Art Silk
Ends: 4/0 on 170gsm Art Silk
Cased
Jacketed
Liverpool: World Waterfront City
A celebratory photographic exhibition and book with photography by Paul McMullin and Guy Woodland. The book will be edited by journalist and writer Lew Baxter and will feature a number of special essayists and contributors. It will also have forewords by Lord Heseltine, the Duke of Westminster and and Francesco Bandarin, Director of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre in Paris.
THE planned exhibition and related book are to be a celebration of Liverpool’s historic ‘Waterfront’ that was awarded UNESCO World Heritage site status in 2004.
Both will be launched in October 2008 in the awe inspiring Liverpool Anglican Cathedral, to coincide with Liverpool’s ongoing activities during its role as European Capital of Culture 2008, and further as a tribute to mark the city’s 800th birthday in 2007.
LIVERPOOL’S waterfront is an exciting, breathtaking vista and one of the most memorable in the world, easily compared with Sydney, New York or Hong Kong. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries the waterfront was the lifeblood of the city and defined its visual identity on a global scale.
It is renowned amongst residents, sailors and tourists alike for the imposing architectural trinity of the elegant ‘Three Graces’ buildings that hold court over the Pierhead and the River Mersey: the grandiose Royal Liver Building that strikes such an emotional chord with natives of Liverpool or the millions of tourists and travellers; the imperial-looking Port of Liverpool Building and the mighty Cunard Building that was the international headquarters for decades of the esteemed shipping line.
Within the World Heritage boundary can also be found Jesse Hartley’s wonderful and now Grade One listed Albert Dock that is home to the highly acclaimed Merseyside Maritime Museum, and to the superb Tate Liverpool that rightly enjoys a world class reputation.
Outside of that area but still an essential and historic part of the waterfront is a string of other fabled docks and quaysides that extend as far north as Seaforth; from where today the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company directs the affairs of The Port of Liverpool, still one of the world’s most important maritime centres.
The River Mersey has been a magnet for people for centuries; the swirling occasionally unruly tides reflecting Liverpool’s own historical and contemporary ebbs and flows: socially, economically and politically. The waterfront displays different and often erratic moods throughout every day and night, never mind in the spectres of the past when it was pivotal to the emergence of the city as probably the most important seaport in the world.
This exhibition and related book project is a collaborative partnership between photographers Paul McMullin and Guy Woodland and journalist/writer Lew Baxter - who have all worked at one time or another in the last forty years or so on the waterfront, witnessing and recording its changing fortunes.
This stunning and eclectic collection of images will paint a striking and panoramic kaleidoscope of the waterfront and all its evocative, atmospheric moods and shapes from dawn to dusk and throughout the night. Both the exhibition and related book will incorporate a series of essays and profiles in a text that traces the waterfront’s history and will reflect the feelings and emotions of the city’s people: a marvellously and wildly anarchic mix of cultures and races.
EXHIBITION
The exhibition is a celebration of the waterfront with the World Heritage site as its epicentre but panning around the rest of the docks complex and river. It will be contemporary in style but will weave in the demise of the south docks complex in the early 1970’s and trace its change in fortunes to the modern day, particularly the regeneration programme that is transforming Liverpool - and its waterfront - into a dynamic 21st century city.
The exhibition will be launched in the Anglican Cathedral but will also be staged at various venues through out Liverpool and will coincide with the launch of the inter-linked and lavish ‘coffee table’ hardback book that features all of the images on show – and many, many more. It will put a modern day focus on one of the world’s iconic waterfronts. The book is likely to become for many a collector’s item and will certainly be a sought after contemporary record of Liverpool in the early years of the 21st century.
The exhibition will be made available to the partners of the project and to Liverpool City Council. Later it is planned to organise a travelling exhibition around the UK and to other major ‘world waterfronts’ helping to put the spotlight on the splendour and architectural magnificence of Liverpool. In particular we are focusing on Shanghai's staging of the World Expo in 2010.
CONTENT
The exhibition and book will build on earlier publications such as Liverpool: World Heritage City and Waterfront by Guy Woodland and Lew Baxter; and The Portrait of Liverpool, a vivid collection of award-winning and limited edition photographs by Paul McMullin.
The main ‘body’ of the project will incorporate images and memories of Liverpool’s waterfront recorded by the photographers and a number of writers. In addition, however, to mark the European Capital of Culture year, we will be inviting people who have an affinity with the city – a deep affection and a point of view - to send us their Postcard from Liverpool: perhaps a few thoughts that will encapsulate and endorse the strong feelings and emotions that we know exist in abundance for the city and the waterfront.
The waterfront project is chaptered by location in and around the formal confines of the UNESCO bound Heritage site, and then taking in the river area from the lighthouse at Hale up to the Seaforth radar station on the Liverpool side of the Mersey, and pulling in the lighthouse at New Brighton. With a fascinating and informed section that introduces the city and traces its development, we believe this will be a landmark exhibition and publishing endeavour never before undertaken by - and involving - so many people.
Technical specifications
EXHIBITION: The touring exhibition will showcase a number of images from the book. Each image will be printed on exhibition quality 100% rag paper using the latest archival inks for maximum longevity and framed to give an overall size of 40” x 30”. All the images will be available as limited edition prints. The exhibition will be available throughout 2008/2009 to the partners of the project.
BOOK: Printed to our usual high standards the book will be printed on the finest art papers, varnished and sealed, hardback (rounded) binding with silver foiling. It will comprise 240 pages.
www.worldheritagecity.co.uk