When Antonio Franco and his wife moved from Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela to Liverpool in 2014, he became intrigued by the city’s old independent shops and the stories behind them.
“When I arrived I just basically started wandering the streets with my camera,” he says. “I started grabbing any random bus towards different areas of Liverpool, and I found all these shop fronts that had a history behind them – some of them looked really old. Most of the architecture in Venezuela is very recent, it’s a young country, so it was interesting to see these places that are 200, 250 years old and they’re still there.”
He started an Instagram project, Liverpool’s Shop Fronts, inspired by James and Karla Murray’s book Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York. “It’s the same story: there are always places that are disappearing because of new developments and gentrification,” he says.
Among the shop fronts featured is the Baluster in Wavertree, a Grade II-listed building with a deep green facade situated in a row of shops dating back to the Georgian era. “That’s one I really liked. It’s Liverpool’s last surviving example of a bow-windowed shop front.”
The project also includes a pub called the Irish American bar, which was near Liverpool Lime Street Station. It was popular with Americans during the second world war and allegedly a haunt of Jack Kerouac.
Many of the places featured in his project have since closed or been demolished, which Franco says poses a threat to the city’s history and identity. “They shouldn’t be torn down for new buildings. If the city starts looking like any other city it will lose a bit of its personality.”
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