Daniel Meadows: early photographic works, 1972-1987

Daniel Meadows was a prominent and enterprising member of a new grouping of young British photographers in the 1970s who were interested in the ‘ordinary’ and fascinated by working class culture. Excluded from mainstream photojournalism, they used new funding opportunities to independently explore the possibilities of photography.

In the early 1970s, these independent photographers were mavericks, creating their own artistic networks. The magazine Creative Camera, and galleries such as Impressions in York, the Photographers Gallery and the Half Moon Gallery, in London became important distribution channels for them.

In 1973, Meadows began a journey across England in the Free Photographic Omnibus, setting up free portrait studios and making documentary photographs. He also made an extraordinary set of colour photographs while working as a Butlins ‘Walkie’. His projects included photographing the ‘real’ Coronation Street in Salford, with Martin Parr, and setting up a free portrait studio in the Moss Side area of Manchester. His legacy is an archive of enduring photographic and digital documents.

Daniel Meadows: Early Photographs from the 1970s and 80s by Val Williams, will be published by Photoworks on 30 September. Val Williams’ text places Meadows in context of cultural moves and social mores of the 1970s and 80s, as well as narrating the history of independent photography at this time.

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

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