Melanie and Janet behind the cosmetics store counter: Best photo by Victor Wedderburn | Photography

TI had his photo taken at our beauty shop in Bradford, called Shed. Janet (right) was a friend of my then-wife Melanie (left). I spent two years taking photographs and enjoyed them, not because I thought my work was good enough to be shown in an art gallery. I couldn’t earn enough from photography to cover the costs of materials, so we decided to take out a bank loan and open the shop instead, with Janet as a partner.

I first started practicing photography in 1983, when I was 28, after I was laid off from my job as a truck driver. I had a friend who was a photojournalist and I would go and watch him take black and white pictures in his darkroom, where you had a red light on to see what you were doing. So when I heard about someone who was selling a color set, I jumped at the chance. I thought my friend would help me learn how to use it but he didn’t know how to develop color photographs. It was only when I started teaching myself that I realized how difficult it was.

My photos from that time seem important now because that community has disappeared. They demolished the apartments, and the entire community spread out. In the summer, there was a gathering of Afro-Caribbeans outside the Perseverance Hotel or the Young Lions Café. There was always music and people who knew me. One of the pictures I took is of a man carrying a ghetto bomber – there was always someone carrying one. In a café there will be one on the shelf, belonging to some customer or other. There was also a pool table, and there were always people sitting there, whether they were eating or not.

Recently, the photos have found new audiences. My friend Ned Archibong, who works at UK City of Culture Bradford 2025, knew about this. I’ve been digitizing them for about 25 years, and every now and then I’ll put one or two on Facebook and get a lot of comments. When Ned told me that people at the City of Culture wanted to display these works, I couldn’t believe it. They were displayed in an old converted warehouse called Loading Bay. I parked the car, headed into the building, and found myself staring at a billboard with a picture of my friend, the poet Michael. He wrote a poem to go with my photos. As the elevator door opened into the gallery, my name filled the wall. When I walked in and saw all the pictures enlarged, I thought I must be dreaming.

The exhibition was then held at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. I thought it would be in one of the rooms upstairs but no, it was in the main foyer! There was also a smaller collection on display as part of a group show at Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds.

The beauty shop in this photo was abandoned when we got it, and we worked hard to fix the problem, but the business went out of business within 10 months. What we never took into account was the fact that the Afro-Caribbean community in Bradford was small.

I then moved to Birmingham and worked in a bakery, which was hell. About a year later, Melanie and I separated, and I moved back to Bradford with my daughter. Eventually, I settled into working for the NHS where I stayed until I retired four years ago. I still take pictures with my phone, but not in a professional way.

Victor Wedderburn’s photographs can be viewed on the photography website Autograph.