VIEWFINDER: FULL CIRCLE

Photographer Nigel Green’s latest project, ‘From the Radical to the Local’ is published on 9 March with words by architectural historian Martin Meade.

It will be exhibited in three French locations during the year. Instigated by the Picardy-based photographic organisation Diaphane, it explores the nature of reconstruction in war-ravaged northern France after both the First and Second World Wars. Whole towns, villages and industrial districts had to be rebuilt from scratch, but while many such reconstructions provided a specifically regionalist take on modernism, they are generally little appreciated or recorded. With the passing of time, some have themselves fallen into decay, as with this fine, almost neoclassical broken-circle railway engine shed at Hirson-Buire near the Belgian border. ‘Originally there would have been a central turntable to direct trains into it,’ says Green. It may look like a stadium but that’s just its roof. Built in 1946-8 and designed by engineer Bernard Lafaille, it was part of one of the largest railway complexes outside Paris, and now stands in an industrial regeneration zone. A companion structure is still in partial use in Amiens.  More information on the project is at www.nigelgreen.info and www.diaphane.org HP