Photographer Took Photos Of Strangers In The 1970s, And When 20 Years Passed, He Set Out To Find Them Again

Daniel Meadows

Daniel Meadows is a pioneer of contemporary British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings, made over forty-five years, capture the life of England’s `great ordinary’. Challenging the status quo by working collaboratively, he has fashioned from his many encounters a nation’s story both magical and familiar.

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May (1919-1995) And Melody “Molly” Gower, 1974 And 1997

This book includes important work from Meadows’ ground-breaking projects, drawing on the archives now held at the Bodleian Library. Fiercely independent, Meadows devised many of his creative processes: he ran a free portrait studio in Manchester’s Moss Side in 1972, then travelled 10,000 miles making a national portrait from his converted double-decker the Free Photographic Omnibus, a project he revisited a quarter of a century later.

Michael Mcparland (Left) And Peter Mcparland (Right), 1974 And 1995

At the turn of the millennium he adopted new `kitchen table’ technologies to make digital stories: `multimedia sonnets from the people’, as he called them. He sometimes returned to those he had photographed, listening for how things were and how they had changed. Through their unique voices he finds a moving and insightful commentary on life in Britain. Then and now. Now and then.

David (Left) And Mary (Right) Ingram, 1974 And 1998