I have no clear memory of taking this photo. From my notes, I know that it was taken using Kodak T-Max Pro 400. And from the context – the photos on either side of the negative were all shot in and around Kelso – I presume that that’s the location. But beyond that, my memory fails me.

The subject reflects a lifelong love of derelict and abandoned objects. Trying to find beauty in the mundane and the ugly. There’s an obvious contrast with the stone wall. It’s far older than the chair, and yet much better preserved. Today, if I went looking for the street where the photo was taken, the walls would still look the same. Almost certainly, the cobbles would still have vegetation growing from between them. There may even be an abandoned chair in the same place, but it wouldn’t be this chair, because this chair has long since been consigned to landfill.

I didn’t stage this scene. I never do. I simply came across an ignored and abandoned object, and tried to find beauty in the ugliness. This is a scene of emptiness – but it’s also a scene which harks back to earlier days, when this chair was a treasured possession. Maybe a bedroom chair from someone’s first home. Maybe a long-forgotten chair from a conservatory which has long since been adapted for use as a laundry room.

The use of film adds another dimension here. The film was long-since expired. At least 20 years out of date, I had to work hard on my negative scanner to obtain a usable image. Would the image have been as successful if it were a noise-free digital photo? I doubt it. If it was digital, I would have taken it into Affinity Photo and artificially distressed it. But I doubt I could ever have captured the mood of that expired Kodak film.