I know this is a bit lengthy folks, but please give it a read through before looking through the Twin Towns Collaboration Project. It helps to set the scene for the images and should give you a head start into the reasons why each set was put together. Each diptych/triptych contains at least one photograph from Middlesbrough UK and one from Oberhausen, Germany.

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This project would not have been possible without the help from the select residents of Middlesbrough, England and Oberhausen, Germany:

Emma Darvel, Paul Jones, Christian L., Sven Nadolski, Uwe Schröder, James Whatling and Emily Yeoh

Thousands of towns and cities are joined together from all over the world in the Twin Town scheme. The concept became popular in Europe after the Second World War as a way of reuniting the continent. Today the arrangements can mean many things, from the sceptical view of ‘a cheap holiday for a councillor’, to school exchanges, mercy missions and cultural celebrations or fairs. I wanted to use this project to look into the idea of twinning in more detail, and to find out the reasons and decisions behind the twinning choices.

Middlesbrough has been in the press quite a lot recently, with Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location claiming that is it the worst place to live in the United Kingdom because of bad crime, drug, health and education statistics. I felt that it would be a good place to base my project around because of these issues and also because of my interest in the city’s industrial history.

I began my project by looking into Middlesbrough’s twins; Oberhausen in Germany, Masvingo in Zimbabwe and Dunkirk in France. Middlesbrough also shares a namesake in Kentucky, USA, which I wanted to investigate. After initial research I found out that the ties with Dunkirk and Masvingo had not been kept up, due to ‘financial constraints’ and Middlesboro KY was not an official twin. I felt that my project would not be as strong if I included these cities so I decided to look solely at Middlesbrough UK and Oberhausen in Germany. It was obvious from the beginning of this project that I would not be able to travel to Germany to take photographs so I posted messages on forums and profiles on the world wide art community, deviantART asking if residents of the cities would collaborate together by taking photographs for my project. I decided to ask people in Middlesbrough as well as Oberhausen because I wanted the images to be taken by citizens of the cities, as they would know more about the area than I would. I explained my project briefly for them to decide if they would like to be included. I finally managed to get 12 people interested and sent out disposable cameras to each of them so they could begin documenting their city.

I looked into the similarities between Middlesbrough and Oberhausen, and also into the reasons they had been chosen to be twinned together. I wanted to raise these points visually in my final edit of photographs, with the main issue being how the decline of heavy industry has affected the state of the cities today. Although I gave each person
a few starting points to think about whilst taking their photographs I didn’t really have a lot of control over the images that I was to receive in the post. This has been both a positive and a negative factor because although it was sometimes difficult to create a good set of images I was also often pleasantly surprised at the similarities between photographs from each country.

Oberhausen’s main industries were steel and coal. When the industries began to decline the factory sites were bulldozed and the land was used to create the “Neue Mitte”, or “New Town”, which includes the Centr.O (a large shopping centre), a theme park and the old Gasometer; now an exhibition hall. It seems as though the ‘old town’ centre has been forgotten about and has been left to decline whilst all of the effort has gone into making more of the new site. The Centr.O is what Oberhausen is now known for and seems to be its biggest tourist attraction. The only reminder of Oberhausen’s past is the Industry Museum.

Middlesbrough is also known mainly for its industries, including coal, chemical, steel and iron, and like Oberhausen, has fallen into a decline. However, the local council has tried to revive the city by putting more into the culture and leisure sector. There was also uproar concerning the recent Location, Location, Location poll, with residents claiming
that the footage shown on the TV series was not all current or even of Middlesbrough.

Each set of images in this presentation shows at least one of Middlesbrough and one of Oberhausen. I have used my research into the areas and the actual look of the images to group them together to raise a selection of issues regarding the individual cities and their twinning partnership.


Sally Hoban