Preston Bus Station

It was while living in Preston in 2010 that the city’s imposing Brutalist bus station, built by Ove Arup and Partners in 1969, first caught Hawkesworth’s eye. “I did a project with Adam Murray, an ex-tutor of mine, where we spent the weekend at the bus station and produced a little newspaper filled with portraits of the teenagers we saw there”. A few years later when Hawkesworth heard of plans to demolish the iconic building he determined to «move back to Preston for a month and spend every day in the bus station taking photographs. The station is one big loop, and I just walked around it all day, every day, just waiting for people to pop out at me. I tried not to think about it any more than that, it was just whoever would catch my eye in a particular moment. It was a centre for Megabus so if a bus comes from up North, it goes through Preston to go South, so there was always an influx of really interesting people coming through the station. When I found someone, I’d ask to take their portrait and that was it. To a certain extent, I was trying to be spontaneous about it; whether it was an old man, a kid with a funny haircut or interesting shoes – I just let anything be photographed.” After seven years, since Hawkesworth began the project his first monograph Preston Bus Station is being published this fall by Dashwood Books.