Daniel Mead­ows, Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr

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Recently I went to two exhib­i­tions of Brit­ish social photo­graph­ers’ work of the 60s and 70s. Daniel Mead­ows at the Library of Birm­ing­ham, and Only in England– Tony Ray Jones and Martin Parr at the Science Museum. All three photo­graph­ers were contem­por­ar­ies and friends, work­ing on simil­ar topics of noti­cing the arrest­ing and unusu­al in ordin­ary people in every­day settings. All photo­graphs in this entry are from the photo­graph­ers’ own websites.

florence snoad

When he was a student, Daniel Mead­ows set up a rudi­ment­ary studio in a poor area of Manchester, and invited local people to have their portrait taken for free as part of a project. Later on, in the early 70s, he got fund­ing to do the same thing in a bus trav­el­ling all around the coun­try. 25 years later he tracked down some of the people (such as Florence Snoad above) and took compar­is­on portraits of them. He has a very compre­hens­ive website here, with photos and films telling the stor­ies of his trip and the people he photo­graphed.

tony ray jones

In the Science Museum exhib­i­tion, Tony Ray Jones‘ work focused on the eccent­ri­cit­ies of every­day life, and Martin Parr showed a less well-known project of his from the 70s of non-conform­ist hill farm­ers around Hebden Bridge. Because you aren’t allowed to take photos in the gallery, I wrote a spur of the moment note about each photo. The one above was “good sturdy nanna legs in thick nylon stock­ings”. My sketch­book ended up being full of phrases like “drums & nuns”, “drowned in Butlin’s aquar­i­um”, “my ladder makes me super­i­or”, wear­ing tweed, cascad­ing pennies”, “loneli­ness of the short-term board­ing house”, “how much does the Mayor weigh?”, “tennis racquets mark the spot”. I have no idea what I meant by most of those things now, but they provide some nice mental images.

martin parr 2

 As does Martin Parr‘s photo of a Meth­od­ist hold­ing up a cabbage.

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