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FORMAT21 PRESENTS
Brian Griffin Black Country Dada 1969 - 1990 19 May - 5 September
King Sunny Ade, ‘Aura’, 1984
Brian Griffin is one of Britain’s most influential portrait photographers. He achieved early recognition in the 1970s and 1980s, inventing a new photographic style known as ‘Capitalist Realism’. Capturing the different workers of society, his photographs transform workplaces into stages and his subjects into actors. As his career blossomed Griffin continued these techniques as he began to photograph musicians, actors and album covers for iconic bands such as Depeche Mode.
“Those were analogue days! Growing up amongst the factories of the Black Country, studying photography in Manchester alongside my friends Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr, and then with trepidation going down to London to make a living as a photographer in the early 1970s. In popular recollection, the 1970s have gone down as the dark ages; Britain’s gloomiest period since the second world war, was set between Harold Wilson’s ‘swinging sixties’ and
Joe Jackson, ‘Look Sharp!’, Abumn cover, 1979
This exhibition presents an autobiographical survey, as collected in the new publication ‘Black Country Dada 1969 - 1990’, of Brian Griffin’s early and ground-breaking work. In the book and through the images shown here Griffin shares what it was like to survive the tough times as a photographer at the start of his career, whilst all the time developing his practice and new ways of making images.
Margaret Thatcher’s divisive eighties. What was it like to be a young photographer then? By the end of the 1980s my photography was known throughout the world. How did I do it? What did I go through? It’s all in this exhibition and my recent publication in which I tell the story, warts and all.” Brian Griffin, 2021