Becky the dog steals the show in John Dean’s Nottingham photograph

I took this 50 years ago as a 20-year-old, away from Baltimore for the first time on an exchange between my tutor at Maryland Institute College of Art and a colleague at Nottingham Trent University. I spent a spring semester in Nottingham with no classes—strictly photography and on my own—and lived on the third floor of a Victorian house with a young family whose baby turned one while I was there.

I went out every day, to the Arboretum or just walking around town, watching Victorian buildings being torn down to make way for council housing. It wasn’t that different from Baltimore: both working-class towns with industries that were waning, and local kids treated the demolition sites as playgrounds, climbing through windows and exploring empty buildings.

I regularly saw Joe walking in the Arboretum. The dog Becky and his granddaughter are what make this picture; I have other shots of Joe that are less captivating. He became someone to talk to and we liked to talk about music.

becky, john dean, nottingham, photograph, baltimore, maryland institute, nottingham trent, victorian buildings, council housing, arboretum