All change

Looking down Chapel Field Road, Norwich

In the last image i referred to changes to the environment due to our consumption needs. This photograph has a similar theme but from a urban perspective. The store on the right hand side of the image is the old Co-Operative building in Norwich.

For those people not familiar with this old British institution, the co-op was a large corporation that had fingers in all sorts of pies from shipping to funerals during the early 20th century. More recently they were known for large department stores selling everything from food to furniture. During the 1990's, household names like Binns and the Co-Op decided to start closing stores due to rising costs.

The last of these large stores finally closed about five or six years ago and they have remained empty ever since - all part of a cost cutting exercise that has left large areas of derelict shop space in many British towns and cities. In the age of the Internet shopper and out of town shopping, these buildings have become monuments to the old way of shopping.