During the first Lockdown of 2020, Edinburgh-based Heidi Alexander found a forgotten box of 35mm negatives. With the encouragement of friends and The British Cultural Archive, she began sharing them online. Fast-forward to January 2021, when The Guardian published many of the rediscovered black and white (and some in colour) images taken by Heidi during two brief trips to Stockport with her Leica M4 camera in 1976 and 1977. It was the headline which first caught my attention—‘Bra stalls and cow’s udder: the long-lost world of Stockport Market’—but then the images grabbed me.

Emails flooded in from Stopfordians. Memories had been refreshed, relatives recognised. People had even identified themselves, sharing their life stories with Heidi. Having myself grown up in the Greater Manchester town, the people and place she captured were so familiar to me that I too emailed her, asking if she had considered producing a photobook? If you don’t ask…

We Zoomed, hit it off and developed a plan to produce a book of the images Heidi had made, embellished with extended captions. Paul Morley contributed a moving Foreword. A Kickstarter campaign followed which enabled the book to be printed.

Heidi and I first met in person during June 2021—just five months after The Guardian piece—when printing the first edition of the book at Kingsbury Press in Doncaster. It quickly sold out, with a second, updated edition produced in July 2022.

For more information head to Heidi Alexander