THE SECRET LIFE OF LIVERPOOL
Hardback Photographic Anthology...By Leroy Cooper.
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LEROY COOPER
A Photographic Anthology
The Introduction To..... The Photographer and his work..!

For a long time now people have been saying to me…
“You should write a book Leroy Cooper, you’d make a lot of money out of it.” The gleam in their eyes always felt like what they really meant was “write a kiss and tell shocker” about your horrifying experiences in Liverpool and in the Toxteth ghetto. Exposing the filthy underbelly of the city is what they really meant. (All I heard was “sell out and make money”)
With all the horror stories about unemployment, crime and poverty, violence and the mentally disturbed, about racism and the brutality of police, about heavy drug abuse and alcoholic destitution, just to titillate the mind of the reader in the leafy suburbs, (Give the public what they want. For a few dollars more, sell out.), telling the stories of broken hearts and of broken minds. How the system degradingly, breaks the human spirit, on its altars of corruption and exploitation. (For thirty pieces of blood stained silver, denounce your roots… Sell out!)
Lifting the carpet to reveal the painful depravity that occurs when people suffer institutional abuse and emotional neglect, with their hopes and dreams crushed. When people "feel" as though or worse realise, they are hated and despised and so in turn they learn to hate. How like a cancer, the negativity of this hate infects them and prevents them from developing into fully rounded, happy human beings. Reveal the “Under Classes” by being, a snooping fly on the wall photo-journalist, revealing the twisted and the grotesque, by revealing the morally and spiritually vacant. Write a book pointing the finger at the substandard human beings of a degenerate society. Revealing the ugly, retarded versions of who they could have been while being left on the benefit scrap heap of life, to rot and wither. 
(The truth is you know all that kind of stuff already. Go to any city in Britain and you can find these sad stories replicated over and over.)
So while the middle classes, the fortunate and better off, show their “two faces” and turn a short sighted, puss bloated, blind eye, indifferent to the suffering of others, their “chav” sisters and brothers. (Is this some freakish Victorian fairground sideshow? I’ve asked myself) There always seem to be the hidden suggestion that I knew all about the rough, the sleazy and the seedy sides of life and therefore I could authentically represent, life at the shitty end of the stick, so to speak. I’ve never wanted to do what people expected of me and I do not want to trot out some generic, stereo-typical clichéd tale, of living the hard knock urban life. 
This book is a celebration of the power of perseverance in the face of adversity. A celebration of the dignity of working class people, who against all odds somehow retain their humanity and are not the lazy, workshy, criminally minded, benefits scrounging scum, as depicted by some sections of the media.  This book represents teenagers who grew up in the street life culture but who had ambitions and dreams to be more than society said they should aspire to be. Just because we are Black or Scousers does not mean we are thieves and scumbags. This book is about the secret life of Liverpool as seen through, my camera lens and through my love of the people of this city. My Liverpool, it may not be the place you thought you knew or recognised from TV news and documentaries. MY TRUTH