Leeds terraces 2006-2024, photographed by Ricky Adam – interview

Ricky Adam is a documentary photographer known for capturing subcultures and everyday life with raw honesty. Originally from Ireland, Ricky relocated to Leeds in the 2000s, and has captured thousands of pictures of the outer-city’s red brick terraces and residents.

Back-To-Back documents nearly two decades of Ricky’s work. Published in 2025 with support from the British Culture Archive, the series shows Leeds’ neighbourhoods in a raw, candid light – Ricky sat down with us to talk through the project, the pictures and his style…

Ricky on starting the project…

To be honest, the Back-To-Back project was never intended to be a book. It was just me going out and taking photos. I ride my bike a lot, and I always had a camera in my pocket, so I’d snap pictures just for the sake of it. The idea of a book didn’t come until much later when I started reviewing all the photos. I realised I had thousands of images of Leeds, just from my casual bike rides. That’s when I started thinking there might be something in it.

British Culture Archive had featured me in a few pieces before, and when I mentioned the project, they offered to help.

I had thousands of photos, and honestly, most of them were terrible. The editing process took about a year. The first version I put together was a dummy book, and it was huge… about 300 pages, with over 600 images. In the end, there are about 60 or 70 photos in the book.

On the direction of the book…

I wanted it to be a positive reflection of Leeds. It would’ve been easy to make it dark and grim, but I didn’t want to focus on that side of things. I felt it would reflect poorly on me and on the community. Once I made that decision, I removed the more negative images and focused on capturing the real, positive essence of Leeds. It became important to me that the book truly represented those areas of the city.

On moving to Leeds from Ireland…

Yeah, I used to work for DIG BMX magazine for years, and I was flying over to the UK every other week to do stuff. I’d been over [to Leeds] a few times, met a few people, and then a room came up in a shared house – and that was enough to make the move. Our office was split between London and the north, so Leeds was right in the middle. It just made sense.

It was a great time – this was the mid-2000’s and the punk DIY community in Leeds was really good. At the time there were lots of house shows. Leeds had a few punk houses and squats and bands often played in basements or in some cases the living room. There’s a photo in the book of a band playing an ‘eviction gig’. A last blast before everyone was kicked out the next day.

On how Leeds is changing…

It’s funny, with the Back-To-Back project, a lot of people who’ve seen the book think the photos are from the 1980s. The city centre has changed massively, but the surrounding areas, not so much. They haven’t been redeveloped. It’d just be too expensive for the council to flatten and rebuild all those terraces.

And they’re home to thousands of people. You don’t have to go far out of the city centre before you hit miles and miles of red-brick suburbs. It’s a huge area. So while the centre’s been built up – more retail, more student housing, more development – the outer areas still feel very familiar.

On Ricky’s photography approach…

Yeah, that’s a good word for it: organic. But of course, there are conscious influences as well – I love people like Shirley Baker, Tom Wood, Chris Killip… that whole lineage. So when I started shooting, I naturally leaned toward that kind of work.

What’s interesting is that while this kind of photography has been done many times before, it hasn’t really been done in Leeds in recent decades. Most of those classic books are from the 1970s or 80s. So I wanted to update that idea and bring it into the 2000s.

On the response to Back to Back…

Since the book came out, I’ve had lots of positive messages. Mostly from people who grew up in the city and moved away or ex-students who came to Leeds to go to university. It’s a very transient place. Thousands of students live in these terraces for a few years and then move on. It’s a continual cycle of people coming and going each year.

Photography and nostalgia are a powerful combination and when people see photos of a place they recognise, it often triggers a reaction. For example, I’ve had a few messages about a stray cat, ‘Bertie’ who features in the book. Someone said they used to feed and look after him before he passed away. Someone else recognised their old neighbour from fifteen years ago, the street they used to live on, etc.

It’s nice hearing these stories, it makes me acknowledge that the photos in the book aren’t really mine. They belong to the people who have lived in these terraces over the years.