Daniel Meadows – mapping British society in photographs

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Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 1970s and 80s

By Val Williams

As Val Williams states in the opening section of this long overdue retrospective of Daniel Meadows’ work, his images are best read as a series of engagements with the cultural contexts in which he produced these impressive photographs. The disarmingly transient subjects they depict are more than simple glimpses of the past. They are, as Graham Clarke once noted, portraits ‘frozen in a continuous present’ that have a continuing resonance. 

Although ostensibly a published archive of work these images seem remarkably contemporary in the current economic climate. Their focus on the nature of identity, place and belonging never ceases to exercise a fascination.  The book charts the development of Meadows’ career and provides an excellent introduction to several bodies of work produced between the early 1970s and late 1980s. The core of works illustrated in his previous books is well collated. The high quality of the reproductions here allows for a focused reading of the surface detail and the visual texture of many of these images, which retain the essential nature of their originals.

The distinctive look of these photographs helps to further accentuate the ‘historical’ nature of the processes (especially the early colour work) and the sense of authenticity they evoke, as does the inclusion of a rich archive of contemporary documents. It all conveys something of the social and cultural commentary that resonates through George Orwell’s writings, and the sense of the mapping of British society in this difficult period of our national history is palpable. Meadows, although  primarily seen as part of the new documentary school of photographers, is clearly different in the sense that he explicitly recognizes the status of the photograph as an historical text. He has explored this effectively in a series of short films and oral history projects viewable on his website.

As a photographer and social historian he is able to combine interview and oral history methods. What marks all his work, from the makeshift Moss Side studios to the mobile bus project, is a respect for and intimacy and fascination with the people he pictures. His subjects are clearly equals. No downward gaze or stereotyping – just a series of conversations between the camera, subject and a common social context. Racial and social differences are naturalized and become unremarkable.

The selection of photographs and the quality of the reproductions means that this volume, and the accompanying exhibition recently mounted at the National Media Museum provide a comprehensive introduction to Meadows’ work. It is an important body of British photography that charts both the development of the photographer, his very particular approach to social documentary and the country it depicts through its ordinary subjects. The text provides a very useful guide to the work, the broader contexts of British photography during this period and the contexts in which Meadows was working. It clearly defines Meadows as an important and deeply compassionate chronicler of British society and as someone with a deep sense of respect and empathy for those he pictures.

The often difficult process of portraiture, in which it is easy to see some sense of the exploitative or subjective, is absent from this work. Instead, we see a series of images and contexts in which these subjects are empowered and allowed to speak for themselves. Even the interiors, which might otherwise appear kitsch or purely nostalgic, instead assume the status of historical documents and a paean for times past in which the brazen consumerism of the present is understated. People are proud of their possessions and comfortable within the spaces they inhabit but never seen as covetous or materialistic.

Meadows’ recent revisiting and re-photographing of many of his original subjects (not included in this volume) demonstrate the efficacy and longevity of his working method and of his humanistic approach to the project of photography. His portraiture is both historic and contemporary. The subjects have aged between his visitations; some have died and are only evidenced by their absence in the new photographs. 

Like August Sanders’ photographs of German society of the 1930s and Bill Brandt’s longer projection of British society, these photographs represent an important archive that will similarly be visited and revisited in years to come.  Photoworks have produced a successful and well-designed collection and Val William’s text is constantly informative without dictating the interpretation of these images, which is often a shortcoming in such projects. Her use of a parallel historical method that draws on a fascinating range of social and cultural histories provides a rich series of frames through which to approach the works, explore the genuinely experimental and pioneering approach that distinguishes Meadows, allowing the images to speak for themselves and their subjects to continue to speak through them.

Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 1970s and 80s  by Val Williams is published by Photoworks 2011. 248 pp. Fully illustrated. ISBN 978-1903796467