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Exhibition: ‘Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works’ at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 30th September 2011 – 19th February 2012

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
25th wedding anniversary party. Farnborough Park, Kent. August 1985
From Suburbia, 1984-1987
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

In the 1970s, Daniel Meadows was at the forefront of the independent photography movement. His practice is complex, passionate and sometimes deeply autobiographical.

Daniel Meadows’ early work broke with tradition and infused the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. Between 1971 and 1987, he produced an astonishing record of urban society in Britain, working in a uniquely collaborative way through his interviews with – and writing about – his subjects.

Text from the National Science and Media Museum website

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Many thankx to the National Media Museum, Bradford for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All pictures are copyright © Daniel Meadows except for the June Street, Salford which is copyright © Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr.

Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s authored by Val Williams

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) and Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
From June Street, Salford, February – April 1973
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952) and Martin Parr (British, b. 1952)
From the series June Street, Salford, photographed in Salford
1973
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Brighton, Sussex. May 1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
Left: identified as James O’Connor. Right: David Balderstone
November 1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the Free Photographic Omnibus portrait series, photographed in Hulme, Manchester
1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
The Free Photographic Omnibus
1974
From the Free Photographic Omnibus, 1973-1974
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the Free Photographic Omnibus portrait series, photographed in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
1974
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the series National Portraits: Now & Then, mother and son Susie and Peter Gatesy, Brighton, Sussex 1974 and London 2000
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From the series National Portraits: Now & Then, twin brothers Michael (left) and Peter McParland, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, 1974 and 1995
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
From Butlin’s Filey, Yorkshire, July – August 1972
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
The Dome of Fun and Fortune
1972
From the series Butlin’s by the Sea, Filey, Yorkshire
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Falling
1972
From the series Butlin’s by the Sea, Filey, Yorkshire
© Daniel Meadows

The National Science and Media Museum presents the first retrospective of the career of Daniel Meadows – photographer, documentarian, digital storyteller and unofficial co-founder of a uniquely British photography movement. Daniel Meadows was one of a group of photographers who spearheaded the independent photography movement in the early 1970s, breaking with tradition and infusing the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. His practice is complex, passionate and sometimes deeply autobiographical.

Between 1971 and 1987, he produced an astonishing record of urban society in Britain, working in a uniquely collaborative way through his interviews with – and writing about – his subjects. Meadows is a documentarist and an exceptional storyteller. He reveals historic and culturally significant aspects of people’s lives, dating from the 1970s to the present day. This exhibition displays photographic works alongside oral testimonies by some of the people featured in the photographs and Digital Stories.

Meadows’ practice developed at Manchester Polythechnic, where he trained alongside fellow photographers Martin Parr, Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Peter Fraser. Together they spearheaded a new documentary movement intent on establishing an independent method for making and disseminating photographs, outside the existing conventions of commercial practitioners and photojournalists. Meadows’ resulting work displays complexity and passion, and confers a personal and sometimes deeply autobiographical imprint. During his career he has produced an astonishing record of urban British society, working in a uniquely collaborative way, through photography, digital stories and recorded interviews, to capture extraordinary aspects of everyday life.

His career began in 1972, when he opened a photographic studio in a former barber’s shop in the Moss Side area of Manchester. The Shop on Greame Street features residents from the district who posed for a portrait which they then received free of charge. None has been previously exhibited, and a selection will be on public display for the first time from October.

Two further early projects are also included in the exhibition, both undertaken in partnership with Martin Parr. June Street, 1973, is an intimate portrayal of working class households in an area of Salford, which have since been demolished. Butlin’s by the Sea, 1972, presents a fascinating record of the holiday camp in Filey, North Yorkshire, just after the heyday of this style of British resort.

In 1973, Meadows, aged 21, also bought a 25-year-old Leyland PD1 double-decker bus for £360.20. He removed the seats to make space for a darkroom and living quarters and named it the Free Photographic Omnibus. He spent 14 months taking his Greame Street studio philosophy of free portraits on tour around England. Original photographs from the journey appear in the retrospective, along with a selection from a follow-up project in which Meadows sought out his Photobus subjects more than 20 years later to re-photograph them for National Portraits: Now and Then, 1995-2000.

Other notable works displayed include Decline in the Cotton Industry, 1975-1978, Welfare State International, 1976-1983, and Nattering in Paradise, 1984-1987. The gallery will also screen a selection of Meadows’ Digital Storytelling films. Condensing personal stories into two-minute features of approximately 250 heartfelt words and 12 images, he created “multimedia sonnets from the people”, leading American commentator J.D Lasica to call him “one of the icons of the Digital Storytelling movement.”

This exhibition and the accompanying publication is the product of research by Professor Val Williams as part of an ongoing study into British photography of 1970s and 1980s at the University of the Arts London. It is preceded by the research project, The New British Photography, 1968-1981, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Together Val Williams and Daniel Meadows have brought to light the photographer’s incredible archive of prints and negatives, along with ephemera and audio recordings. They have unearthed unpublished and sometimes forgotten treasures which add to a remarkable document – a dramatic, moving and empathetic evocation of a recognisable, yet increasingly alien era.

Press release from the National Science and Media Museum website

Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Work

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Foster mother and children
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Portrait of Angela Loretta Lindsey, aged 8, with her brother Mark Emanuel Lindsey
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Hell’s Angels
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
Untitled
1972
From the free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February – April 1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows (British, b. 1952)
From The Shop on Greame Street portrait series, Moss Side, Manchester
1972
Gelatin silver print
© Daniel Meadows

National Science and Media Museum
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD1 1NQ

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00 – 17.00

National Science and Media Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘The Lives of Great Photographers’ at The National Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 15th April – 4th September 2011

Many thankx to The National Media Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British born India, 1852-1911)
Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron
1870

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Carlyle like a rough block of Michael Angelo’s sculpture
1867
Courtesy The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum/SSPL

Lady Clementina Hawarden (British, 1822-1865)
Self Portrait
c. 1864

John Moffat (Scottish, 1819-1894)
William Henry Fox Talbot with camera and lens
1864

Photographers have created some of the most famous and memorable images ever produced, combining science and art since 1839. The Lives of Great Photographers, a free to enter exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford, draws on the Museum’s renowned collection to focus on the pioneers behind the camera, exploring the extraordinary stories surrounding some of photography’s most important innovators and artists.

Featuring Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robert Capa, William Henry Fox Talbot, Weegee, Tony Ray-Jones, Fay Godwin and Eadweard Muybridge, the exhibition will display iconic images and artefacts from these and other great names, selected exclusively from the National Collection of Photography.

Exhibition curator Brian Liddy said: “Photography has been with us for more than 170 years, and in that time countless famous photographs have been taken by many famous photographers. Often we may think we know these men and women because we know their work so well, but over time so many photographers’ personal stories have become overshadowed by their most famous pictures. This major exhibition aims to redress the balance.”

The show begins with an investigation into the rivalry between two of the medium’s earliest pioneers. Without Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, photography as it known today would not exist. Daguerre, a former theatrical designer, presented the photographic process to France and the world in 1839. Working in parallel and in competition, Talbot, who became an MP for Chippenham, went on to create the first negative from which multiple copy photographs could be produced.

As technology evolved, the breadth and range of photography increased, and the methods by which it could provide a source of income, or artistic expression, became more diverse. Julia Margaret Cameron, although primarily considered an artist, copyrighted her work and attempted to make a living by selling copies. Her personal connections gave her the opportunity to produce some of the first celebrity photographs in existence. Olive Edis employed photography as a serving war artist during the First World War and Edward Steichen’s career was remarkable for its variety as he moved effortlessly from art, to fashion, to advertising.

Photography also proved an ideal medium when it came to documenting world events. Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange were both driven by their social consciences to record the Great Depression in America. Photojournalism, the cousin of documentary photography, is represented in the exhibition by names such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, founding members of the world’s first photographic agency, Magnum. Both served in the Second World War and produced images that helped define an era.

One of the most notorious life stories is that of the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. His pioneering work in chronophotography, whereby movement is captured by a sequence of photographic exposures, famously demonstrated that all four legs of a horse left the ground as it galloped. Until then the motion of a horse’s hooves were too quick for the human eye to determine. Perhaps less well known is the fact that Muybridge murdered his wife’s lover in cold blood but was later acquitted with a verdict of ‘justifiable homicide’.

The exhibition also includes Roger Fenton, Lady Clementina Hawarden, Alfred Stieglitz, André Kertész, and Larry Burrows. Each photographer is represented by their photographic portrait and a selection of their images. None is living, as only those whose lives and work can be evaluated in their entirety have been selected.

Brian Liddy added: “This exhibition shows just how rich the museum’s collections are. The work of some of the best-known photographers in history will be shown alongside the kinds of cameras they would have had to carry and use in the course of their work. We’ve also taken the opportunity to show rarely seen material, such as pages from the notebooks of Tony Ray-Jones detailing what was going through his mind when he was thinking about how to get the pictures he wanted.”

“By recounting the lives of these great photographers, we hope to provide an insight into what led them to produce some of the greatest photographs ever taken.”

Press release from The National Media Museum

Eadweard Muybridge (English, 1830-1904)
Man (Muybridge) throwing discus walking up steps walking
Plate 519 Animal Locomotion
1887

Unknown photographer
Lewis Hine photographing children in a slum
c. 1910
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Dessau, Germany
1945
© Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum, HCB Fondation, courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
Alfred Stieglitz
1905

Unknown photographer
Eadweard Muybridge
Date unknown
Courtesy of The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
George Davison
1918

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Albanian woman Ellis Island
1905

Edith Tudor Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Gee Street, Finsbury
1936
© Wolfgang Suschitzky, courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Unknown photographer
Portrait of Bill Brandt
c. 1979

National Media Museum
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD1 1NQ

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday 10.00 – 17.00

National Media Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Don McCullin – In England’ at the National Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 8th May – 27th September 2009

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Early morning, Steel Foundry, West Hartlepool, County Durham, U.K.
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

A passionate and personal view of England by one of our greatest living photographers, In England reflected on England from the 1950s to the present day. For half a decade McCullin recorded images of England, highlighting issues surrounding wealth, race, class and social justice. This was the first ever exhibition dedicated exclusively to this aspect of his work.

The images, taken mainly from two books – Homecoming (1979) and In England (2007) – are often imbued with their social or political context. Several exhibited photographs were taken during McCullin’s trips to Bradford and around his own home city, London, as well as Liverpool and the North East. The exhibition also included McCullin’s first ever published photograph, The Guv’nors.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the National Media Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

A passionate and personal view of Britain by one of our greatest living photographers is being showcased in a major free-to-enter exhibition at the National Media Museum from 8 May – 27 September 2009.

Don McCullin – In England reflects on Britain from the 1950s to the present day. For half a decade McCullin, in addition to travelling the world photographing war ravaged countries to great acclaim, has been recording England and highlighting issues surrounding wealth, race, class and social justice.

The National Media Museum is hosting the first ever exhibition dedicated exclusively to this aspect of his work. Curator Colin Harding said: “Although Don is probably best known for his war photography, he is not purely a war photographer and does not class himself as such. However, many of the 70 black and white images displayed in this new show are clearly influenced by his experiences abroad. Don’s vision of England is not a pretty one. He photographed what he saw and what he saw was often harsh – poverty, unemployment, discrimination, but he always photographs with passion and empathy.”

Many of the images have a political or social context and are taken extensively from two books – Homecoming (1979) and In England (2007); coincidentally published in the same years Margaret Thatcher came to power and Tony Blair left power respectively. Some of the images will be publicly displayed for the first time.

Don McCullin – In England gives audiences the chance to see his first ever published photograph – of The Guv’nors, a 1950s gang from his neighbourhood around Finsbury Park, London. The picture appeared in The Observer newspaper after a policeman was murdered by one of the gang members.

Several exhibited photographs were taken during McCullin’s trips to Bradford (the National Media Museum’s home city) and around his own home city, London, as well as Liverpool and the North East. Other aspects of English life are featured – a series of landscapes, including a study of Hadrian’s Wall taken earlier this year, a 1968 shoot with The Beatles, and trips to the seaside and Royal Ascot.

To complement the exhibition a new area will be produced on the Museum’s website offering exclusive video interviews, images, further information, and links to other relevant websites.

Text from the National Media Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 12/09/2009 no longer available online

National Media Museum Don McCullin exhibition archive web page.

Photographer Don McCullin on his early years
In 2009 Don McCullin spoke to us about his early years as part of his In England exhibition at the museum.

According to McCullin, a postcard of this photograph sold ‘like hotcakes’ in Australia. McCullin found Snowy, the man in the portrait, standing by the side of the road with an ice-cream barrow in Cambridge, in the early 1970s. He pulled the mouse out of his pocket and put it into his mouth as McCullin took pictures.