Halsgrove Publishing: Liverpool The Great City, Liverpool, 9781841149493.
Liverpool The Great City showcases the resurgence of the port as a tourist, leisure, shopping and educational place. Visitors to the city arrive curious about the birthplace of the Mersey Sound, the home of the Beatles, the old staging post to the New World, the arrival port for wartime Atlantic convoys, to see the city that boasts two important cathedrals or two top-flight soccer teams – a wide variety of reasons. They invariably depart surprised by the breadth and beauty of the city architecture, the magnificent waterfront skyline and, more recently, the quality of the shopping.
Liverpool The Great City provides an overview of the city, a treasured keepsake, a wonderful present for a family member or perhaps those who no longer live in the area and are curious to see how it is changing.The images are brand new, some deliberately taken just days before the book went to press. A small selection, however, are echoes of the past and show the Albert Dock before it was refurbished to become one of the most visited attractions in the whole of the UK. All are presented in a large format hardback that does justice to both the quality and importance of the photographs and of the city itself.
Paul McMullin is a commercial architectural photographer born, raised and based in Liverpool. His work has taken him all over the world on a variety of projects in the Far and Middle East, Africa and America. He is driven by the pursuit of perfection in all his photography and has spent many months, seeking the quality of light that defines his award-winning style. This involved many early dawns, late nights and hours waiting for the light and clouds to be just right.
Mike McNamee is the editor of the photography magazine, Professional Imagemaker and began collaborating with Paul McMullin on features concerned with architectural and panoramic images. He lives and works on the Wirral, in New Brighton, and so has the best view of the Liverpool Waterfront on a daily basis. He has thus been following the emergence of the city and its skyline for more than 50 years.
Imprint: Halsgrove. ISBN 978 1 84114 949 3, hardback, 238x258mm, 144 pages. Published september 2009.
