A joint exhibition of John Bulmer’s The North and Simon Hill’s The North Revisited, exploring how the North of England has changed and endured across six decades of documentary photography!

In 1965, photojournalist John Bulmer FRPS was commissioned by The Sunday Times Magazine to photograph the North of England. At a time when the region was defined by industrial decline, he chose to work in colour, creating images that revealed hardship alongside humanity, dignity and presence. His photographs went on to shape how the North has been seen ever since.

Sixty years later, that legacy became the starting point for The North Revisited, a major new project by award-winning photographer Simon Hill HonFRPS and one of the largest single-photographer commissions of its kind awarded by Arts Council England – featured in The Sunday Times Magazine, 30 August 2026. The project asks a simple question: what has changed, and what remains?

From late 2024 to mid 2026, Hill retraced and expanded upon Bulmer’s original journey, travelling across the historic seven counties of the North to create a remarkable sixty-year photographic conversation about one of Britain’s most distinctive regions and its people. Where Bulmer visited sixteen locations, The North Revisited grew to encompass more than fifty, from Newcastle to Liverpool, former mining communities to coastal towns, city centres to remote landscapes and the motorways connecting them all.

In homage to Bulmer’s pioneering use of colour, much of Hill’s work was shot on Harman Phoenix 200, a contemporary colour film made in the North. Its unpredictable, textured qualities bridge past and present in a single visual language.

The North Revisited is not a simple update of Bulmer’s work, nor an attempt to imitate it. It is a dialogue between two ways of seeing the same region, six decades apart. Where Bulmer’s North was shaped by labour and loss, communities shaped by industry but facing uncertain futures, Hill’s is post-industrial, more diverse and still evolving. Former centres of heavy industry are now sites of cultural reinvention, technological growth, and shifting identities, while carrying the weight of their history.

Echoes of that earlier North remain in the faces, streets and gestures Hill captured, alongside striking departures that reflect how much has changed, and together the two bodies of work build a portrait of a region still reinventing itself, one location at a time.

About Simon Hill

With over 300 UK and international publication credits, including National Geographic Magazine, The Observer Magazine and The Sunday Times Magazine, Simon Hill’s work is held in the National Collection at the National Portrait Gallery, as well as in the collections of the Martin Parr Foundation and the RPS New Collection. His photographs have been exhibited at venues including the National Media Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the British Museum, UNESCO and UNICEF.

A previous winner of Kodak Professional Photographer of the Year and BIPP Professional Photographer of the Year, Hill is the only British recipient of the International Art Portrait Award. He was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 1991 and, in January 2021, was elected its President and an Honorary Fellow, making him the Society’s longest serving President since the late 1800s.