John Myers - The Guide

The Guide John Myers

Front Garden, 1975

CONTENTS

The Portraits Page 8 Who I photographed, Slow photography, Space and Cropping, The Body in the Box, Mr. Jackson, Mr & Mrs Seabourne, Giraffe. Looking at the Overlooked Page 34 Eve Arnold Quote, When I opened my front door, Titles and the generic, Deadpan, The Boring photographs, Subtopia, Lift doors Waitrose, Furniture store, Bus stop, metal gate and sweeping brush, Me, my camera and the viewer, The Labour in Vain, The Bed, Series, The Ten Televisions. The End of Industry Page 84 Sidney Smith Foundry, Pear tree and urn, Female brick worker, Entrance to Industrial Estate, The New Landscape. Bibliography Page 110-111.

An incomplete listing of photographic interests and influences 1972-1975 I was familiar with the work of many of these photographers although often through a mere handful of published photographs.

Prior to the expansion in photographic book publication in the mid -1970s source material could be hard to obtain. Camera, Creative Camera and Art Forum were monthly magazines that kept one abreast of some developments.

John Szarkowski’s publications at M.O.M.A. such as The Photographers Eye and The Photographer and the American Landscape were useful introductory anthologies.

I was not aware of the work of photographers such as Peter Mitchell, Luigi Ghirri and Stephen Shore amongst many others.

The names in bold type were my major influences.

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Berenice Abbottt, G. P. Abraham, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams. D. O. Hill and R. Adamson, Diane Arbus, Eugene Atget, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Hippolyte Bayard, Cecill Beaton, Bernd and Hilla Becher, E. J. Belloq, Henry Hamilton Bennett, Ian Berry, Bisson Freres, Karl Blossfeldt, Samuel Bourne, Mathew Brady, Bill Brandt, Brassai, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier Bresson, Andre Breton (Nadja), Wynn Bullock, Harry Callaghan, Julia Margaret Cameron, Paul Caponigro, Lewis Carroll, Edward S. Curtis, Maxime Du Camp, Bruce Davidson, Jack Delano, Dr. H. Diamond, Jan Dibbetts, Mike Disfarmer, Robert Doisneau, David D. Duncan, Harold E. Edgerton, P. H. Emerson, Elliott Erwitt, Frederick H. Evans, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Jimmy Forsyth, Anna Fox, Alexander Gardner, Ralph Gibson, Gustave Le Gray, Ralph Gobits, Fay Godwin, Brian Griffin, Philip Jones Griffiths, Bert Hardy, Nick Hedges, Paul Hill, John Hilliard, Lewis Hine, Jack Hulme, David Hurn, William Henry Jackson, Frances B. Johnston, Tony Ray Jones, Yousuf Karsh, Kevin Keegan, Andre Kertesz, Chris Killip, Darius Kinsey, Sirkka-Lisa Kontinnen, Josef Koudelka, Les Krims, Dorothea Lange, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Russell Lee, O. Winston Link, Ron McCormick, Donald Mc Cullin, Daniel Meadows, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Duane Michels, Lisette Model, Raymond Moore, Edweard Muybridge, Carl Mydans, Nadar, Paul Nash, Charle Negre, Helmut Newton, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Bill Owens, Eliot Porter, Martin Parr, Jacob A. Riis, Robert Rauschenberg, Arthur Rothstein, H. P. Robinson, Albert Renger-Patzsch, O.G. Rejlander, Ed Ruscha, Victor Regnault, August Sander, Henri Le Seq, Ben Shahn, Charles Sheeler, Art Sinsabaugh, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Graham Smith, Edward Steichen, Sir Benjamin Stone, Josef Sudek, Paul Strand, Herbert Sutcliffe, Jo Spence, Alfred Stieglitz, W.H. Fox Talbot, John Thomson, Doris Ulmann, Unknown photographer, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Bradford Washburn, Carleton E. Watkins, Weegee, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, Minor White, Janine Wiedel, Gary Winogrand.

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There was no project - no check list - no business plan - no written proposal to a funding body (I have never been funded to take photographs) and there were no outcomes planned – I wasn’t working to produce a book or have an exhibition. I just took the photographs by myself.

THE PORTRAITS

Who I photographed The portraits are of people that lived and worked within a few square miles in a quiet, unremarkable town in the Midlands and most of the portraits were taken within walking distance from where I lived. I never set out to photograph a sociological cross section of ages or types of people - I suppose the group that finally emerged was mainly of colleagues and their children, students, people connected with a mental health organisation, relatives and friends.

I photographed people that I knew or that I came across in the daily round. I would ask people if I could take their photograph. There were a number of photographs where I came across a person or situation; decided that I wanted to take a photograph and returned with my camera.

I never ventured out with the camera ‘looking’ for people to photograph.

Robert was a student at the college where I worked, the girl in a hood was the daughter of a colleague, the butcher’s boy worked at a small abattoir in Market Street, the young boy with a ball was the son of my next door neighbour.

Previous page: Self portrait, 1978

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Robert, 1973

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Girl in hood, (No 2), 1973

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Butcher’s boy, 1973

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Young boy with ball, 1974

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Slow Photography I took my photographs in silence... I never worked with anyone else in the room - no distractions. The process wasn’t about talking - or putting the sitter at ease - and I began to realise that the fairly lengthy experience did certain things to people. They began to inhabit their own skin - the animation and gesture of the moment gave way to something that was inherently about themselves and their direct involvement in the process.

The Gandolfi 5 x 4 camera that I used had to be assembled and erected on a tripod, the lens inserted, position of camera and focus of lens established. All of this was partly conducted from under a dark cloth whilst looking into the back of the camera - where the image could just about be seen. The image was of course upside down and back to front. Then the lens was set, the dark slides inserted and slide cover removed…then I was ready to take the photograph.

I preferred working indoors using the available natural light, no flash, so exposure times could be quite long. It was hardly a social occasion and I can’t really recall that I ever said anything. I must have done of course – up to a point – but I never gave instructions about what clothes to wear, pose to adopt, or what they should do with their hands or feet. The only thing I always said was to describe the sound the shutter would make as the photograph was being taken (a click and a purr) … and that I would be obliged if they would refrain from blinking. I suppose it was an arduous, rather exacting experience for many of the subjects. …’there’s a kind of power thing about the camera...everyone knows you’ve got some edge. You’re carrying some slight magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way’ Diane Arbus

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Young girl, 1973

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David in knight’s armour, 1974

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Young boy at house on ring road, 1973

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Space and Cropping Apart from some early photographs that I took using a Mamiya 220 all my work was taken on a Gandolfi 5 x 4 camera. Negative size in all cases was 5 x 4 inches and if I printed the image it was printed to 10 x 8 inches. It never varied – so I had a complete understanding and feel for the negative to print space that I was working with. Over time I was able to gauge those outcomes from the viewer in the camera and combine to my satisfaction the figure and its surrounding space.

None of the images were cropped in the darkroom, I took the photograph and in the successful ones I got it right first time. The cropping in camera was often so tight that the clip marks, used for securing the negative during processing, are sometimes visible in the final print.

The process was not based upon chance.

The space around the subject - whether it be a portrait, or a photograph of a house, garage or television was as important as the subject itself.

One negative was processed separately and was used to establish the processing times. That was my modus operandi.

I would ‘read’ the image in the negative after it had been fixed by tilting the wet negative in the light. I might print one or two prints per image - at the most – but in many instances the negatives were never printed. My initial excitement giving way almost within hours to criticism and dissatisfaction and so I moved on…

Many negatives were never printed. Nicola and Danny Osmond, Peter Olley, Jessie and Evie’, Mr. Jackson were first printed for the Ikon exhibition in 2011.

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Nicola and Donny Osmond, 1973

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Juliette, 1979

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Richard Smith, 1973

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Peter Olley, Jessie and Eve, 1973

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The body in the box Whilst a full length figure within a room is a set form the variations within that limitation are endless. I never measured out a space or finely calculated the ratio of the figure to the background area. Each figure and setting was different and new so that I made quick, intuitive judgements on every shot.

I tended to prefer photographing the figure (s) in shallow space. Almost as if the figures are presented in an open box. In many of the photographs the corner of the room acts like the internal confines of a container.

I very often took the portraits at the person’s house or flat and I made an appointment to go round. I had to decide within a very short time after arriving where I would take the photograph. Because the rooms were often quite small, using the 135 mm slight wide angle lens, allowed me that little extra space to get everything in the photograph. Mrs. Tate was, I seem to remember, taken from the door of her living room.

The space around the figure is as important as the figure itself, because it is the fluid in which they are living. That is why the photographs are never cropped.

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Mrs Tate, 1973

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Ballerina, 1973

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Olga, 1979

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Mr Jackson The time, and date when I took this photograph are not included in my negative index. The clock on the sideboard must have stopped because I can’t imagine I would have taken his portrait at sixteen minutes past nine in the morning. It might of course have been his first cigarette of the day but he looks too fresh; too alert - so I guess the photograph was taken later in the morning or in the afternoon.

The tight foreground allows just enough space to accommodate the figure and the cropping of the cabinet emphasis the compression. Anything more and the Pyrex dishes would probably end up spilling onto the carpet.

The heavily patterned wallpaper that engulfs the skirting board and joins with the carpet seems to squash Mr Jackson into shallow, cubist space. He just manages to re-emerge like someone flattened by patterns from the confines of a pop-up book.

It reminds me of paintings by Juan Gris.

The wallpaper, clock, the Pyrex dishes in the recess of the glazed cabinet are signifiers but it is Mr Jackson’s hands and fingers that do the talking. Cupped and wrapped around the cigarette and the length of ash about to be lightly flicked onto the carpet reinforce the impression that the portrait hinges around the cigarette.

I knew a man who claimed that cigarette ash was good for carpets, maybe he was right, and I can imagine Mr Jackson surreptitiously brushing the ash into the weave of the Wilton carpet with the sole of his slipper.

I know that masterpieces are a thing of the past but I wonder when I look again at the portrait of the man in the cardigan (Mr. Jackson, 1974): his pensive look, the cigarette held like that (with a potential for ash on the carpet), the cardigan and the slippers, all those mesh designs and the commonplace bits and pieces in the cabinet – and that contained wood flame in the wood grain – brilliant.

Ian Jeffrey

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Mr Jackson, 1974

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Mr and Mrs Seabourne I took this photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Seabourne at their house in Stourbridge in 1973. I met them when I gave a talk at the local photographic society and I asked them if I could take their photograph.

The 5 x 4 wood and brass Gandolfi camera was unwieldy, slow to assemble and the image (which appears upside down) had to be framed and focussed on a ground glass screen from within a large black cloth that kept out the ambient light. Yet in this situation the camera came into its own. ‘Taking a photograph’ was changed into making a photograph. The session became an event like a slow motion quadrille – moving the camera, refocusing, setting the lens, inserting the slide carrier containing the film, lifting the slide and waiting … and waiting as the subject began to freeze … and then you take the photograph. A half a second exposure. You have talked them through it, the click and then the whirr, and you just hope that they can hold it together. Not too tight, natural – no blinking.

I took seven photographs that day. We moved to the sofa for the last two shots and suddenly it became natural.

The space fitted them. In the first of the two photographs Mr. Seabourne’s hand hangs down awkwardly in front of his leg and his feet are close together, maybe a sign of tension or discomfort.

But in the three or four minutes between that image and the published photograph, without any instruction or guidance, Mr. Seabourne’s feet have moved and his hand came to rest on his knee. I thought: “Whatever you do, don’t take the pipe out of your mouth and don’t move your hand.” When I saw the hand I knew that was the photograph. Sometimes, when you watch two birds land on a branch there is a moment of apprehension, but then they just settle. In a way that’s what happened here.

Everything just came together: no directions, no props, no flash - just a man and his wife on a sofa in their front room. The decisive moment encapsulated in the movement of a hand.

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Mr and Mrs Seabourne, 1973

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Giraffe The photograph ‘giraffe’ was taken at Dudley Zoo in March 1973. It was cold in the giraffe house and whilst the radiators, set high on the wall of the enclosure, may have offered some warmth at body level for the giraffe they didn’t do very much for someone standing on a concrete floor.

I had to poke the lens through the bars of the enclosure in order to get a clear uninterrupted view and I couldn’t be sure the giraffe would stay in the same position. W.C. Fields famous quote - or a part of it – probably came to mind: “never work with animals”…. The giraffe was named Don and he was born May 1971, his parents were called Geoffrey and Grace.

I took one photograph that day, the exposure was a 25th of a second at f.8.

The patterns on a giraffe are totally unique – no two giraffes are ever the same.

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Giraffe, 1972

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LOOKING AT THE OVERLOOKED

I never deliberately made a decision to photograph the ‘overlooked’ or the mundane. This is the world I live in.

And that was why I photographed it – because there was nothing else.

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Dual Carriageway, 1974 Tye Gardens, 1973

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‘It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.’

Eve Arnold

I think Eve Arnold got it wrong. It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how boring it is.

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Petrified tree trunks, 1976

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When I opened my front door However much I may, at the time, have admired the skill of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston or the pastoral quality of Fay Godwin – they were photographing another world.

When I opened my front door I was confronted by Tarmac (asphalt), houses, a telegraph pole and a substation.

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Lutley Drive, Stourbridge (No 2), 1974 House and garden, Chawn Hill, Stourbridge, 1979

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Benjamin the Rabbit, 1975

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Ring Road ‘gardens’, 1977

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Titles and the generic I have never regarded the photographs as being ‘documents’ of what Stourbridge looked like in the 1970s. The photographs were not intended as views. I am not interested in any historic dimension others seek to impose on the work or in the quirks of details or aspects of the time that viewers often alight upon. I didn’t take the photographs of shops so that they would be remembered – I took them because I went into shops to browse and buy. They were - and still are - a part of where I live.

Whilst some of the shots are identified by place name: Tye Gardens or The Labour in Vain this was solely for the purpose of negative retrieval. I prefer to see them as generic and not site specific.

The photographs present the backdrop to the mundane and the everyday. Some of the shops in the High Street are still empty but now have the homeless sheltering in the doorways at night. The Golf course is unchanged save for the pin being moved, some of the trees have disappeared, and there are now more cars parked on roads and driveways.

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Shop front, High Street, Stourbridge, 1977 Peplows, High Street, Stourbridge, 1977

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Shop counter, customer’s view, 1981

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Deadpan My photographs in this series were taken in flat light that gave imperceptible shade. The angle of view was also important, eye level, nothing fancy, dead pan, taken just as if you were the first person to come across the Garage or the Golf course.

The ‘deadpan’ aspect of these photographs does not just refer to the way the images look, it also describes a way of encountering the world and the refusal of this environment to offer up a visual or narrative engagement. The absence of people was quite deliberate. Why would I include pedestrians, or children playing in the street in a photograph of a garage, or a substation? Introducing figures would add a narrative and turn the photographs into ‘conversation pieces’.

These are landscapes without incident.

But unlike a painting by Edward Hopper - with its sense of foreboding and events just beyond the frame – in these photographs there was no hidden story.

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Garage, 1975

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Ring Road ’gardens’, (small conifer), 1975

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Golf course (No 1), 1975

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The Boring Photographs In these urban scenes I made a conscious effort to reject the ‘value added’ approach to photography that was a powerful force at the time particularly in the work of photographers such as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

I have to confess that I was not interested in photography as a vehicle for interpreting, celebrating or creating formal compositions - or for orchestrating mood through dramatic lighting, tonal inflexion and the juxtaposition of texture.

In the ‘boring photograph’ I tried to present the mundane, the everyday - the world that I lived (and live) in. A place that is ordinary and quite unremarkable.

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Unidentified subject, 1977

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Greenhouse and sheds, 1974

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Cannon in front of flats, 1974

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Subtopia However hard I tried to understand how this sleepy, suburban environment functioned together somehow I always failed. I could never sustain the regime of taking photographs to fit a certain pre-ordered and prescribed agenda.

Whatever I may have read or half understood in Henri Lefebvre’s Everyday Life in the Modern World or the work of the Situationists, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, I continued to go out, see something I wanted to photograph and then go home and get my camera.

Maybe the architectural critic Ian Nairn was right when he coined the term ‘subtopia’ in 1955. Subtopia, he wrote, ‘is the annihilation of the site, the steamrollering of all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre pattern.

Eugénie Shinkle wrote that ‘the subtopian lifestyle was a mean and middling one: culturally and politically conservative, emotionally impoverished and banal. The identical terraced homes, standing shoulder to shoulder on their meagre plots, epitomize the claustrophobia and the stifling homogeneity of the suburban landscape – ‘half-alive towns’ filled with ‘half alive people’ as Nairn commented bitterly.

Maybe I just accepted the claustrophobia and the stifling homogeneity of the environment.

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Heath Lane, undated

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Lift doors at Waitrose We used to do the shopping every Friday at the local supermarket.

The photograph was taken in available light and at eye level to give the impression that you are the first person to come across the lift doors. It is not a special place, no crime - so far as I am aware -occurred here and no event is about to unfold from beyond the edge of the frame.

The image can be summed up in one short sentence: This is a photograph of the lift doors at Waitrose.

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Lift doors at Waitrose, 1975

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Furniture Store The photographs of a furniture store - well I just took them. The store was in the Bull Ring on the same floor as the Ikon Gallery and the Habitat Shop – so I was familiar with its layout. I went into Birmingham asked if I could take the photographs and that was it. I don’t recall spending ages and ages in cropping the image in the camera.

Sofa in shop window, 1979 was wholly different - I probably saw the window whilst I was coming back from the pub and went back in the night to take the photograph. I can remember that it took ages fiddling with the view to get the composition just as I wanted standing with my head under a dark cloth peering into the back of the Gandolfi on the pavement next to a busy set of traffic lights. And it still not as interesting or effective as the furniture series – maybe I was trying too hard at trying to be a photographer. Sometimes you ‘just do it’.

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Furniture store, New Street, Birmingham, (No 5), 1974

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Furniture Store, New Street, Birmingham (No 3), 1974

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Sofa in shop window, 1979

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Bus stop, iron gate and sweeping brush I was a very late comer to the work of Georges Perec and his Species of Spaces, 1974.

I think he may have appreciated this photograph.

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Bus stop, 1975

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Metal gate, 1975

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Sweeping brush, 1976

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Me, my camera and the viewer I prefer the urban landscapes from 1973 and 1974 because they are uncompromising. In Tye Gardens, 1973, Hope Street, Dudley, 1974, and Factory forecourt, 1974 there is correlation between me and the camera.

In 19 Swincross Road, 1979 selection and cropping are tighter and more knowing such that the correlation is now between me, the camera and the viewer.

The differences are subtle – but detectable. Simple selection gave way, over time, to selection and maybe too much cropping in camera.

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Hope Street, Dudley, 1974 Factory forecourt, 1974

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19 Swincross Road, Stourbridge, 1979

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The Labour in Vain The space in the photograph is key because it indicates exactly where I am in relation to the subject.

You are just about to move towards the table, sit and enjoy a drink. It was important that the setting was neutral, there is no half empty glass on the table or cigarette in the ash tray. The image is not part of an on-going narrative.

I can’t recall ’seeing’ the wallpaper although its dominance and style, which is very much of the period, now attracts comment.

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The Labour in Vain, 1975

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The Bed The bed looks like a tomb.

I see a physical shape that refuses to ‘give’ or accommodate.

There’s nothing happening.

I often end gallery talks in front of this photograph…someone always mentions ‘candlewick bedspread’.

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The Bed, 1976

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Series The urban landscapes, substations and televisions were first exhibited and published in 2010. At the time they were presented as discrete series, and whilst that made curatorial sense it also gave the impression that here were bodies of work that had developed through the decade as a series of ‘projects’.

Nothing of course could be further from the truth.

The televisions and the substations were indeed done ‘straight off’ - Television no 1 - 10 almost consecutively and likewise with the thirty or so photographs of substations. But I never regarded them as discrete series. They were taken at the same time that I was taking the portraits, the Furniture store and the Boring photographs.

In truth I was unable to ‘fit’ the work together - How did the photographs of a furniture store make sense with the Bus Stop, or the Petrified trees with the Garage, and how did the Substations and the Televisions ‘fit’ within this body of work?

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The Ten Televisions, 1973

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The Ten Televisions The Ten televisions partially camouflaged by house plants and nestling amongst the books, records and knickknacks seem to have slipped unannounced into these domestic interiors. They often evoke responses ‘Oh I had an action man like that’ or a comment about a gas meter protruding from a wall.

I sometimes sense that the TV screens themselves are invisible – a dead void at the very centre of the photograph.

No one imagined in 1973, just how dominant screen usage was to become. Invariably someone asks, ‘why did you photograph televisions?’ It is a strange question to ask nowadays when so many of us relate to the ‘real’ world via a screen.

The Ten Televisions, 1973 may well be the first photographic typology of the new age.

They mark a beginning, Television has arrived, the age of the screen is about to begin.

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Television No 1 , 1973

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Television No 7, 1973

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Television No 4 , 1973

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Pedmore Road, water pumping station, 1974 80

Saltbrook Road, Lye, Substation No 11242, (No 1), 1974

Bower Lane, Substation No 11701, 1974 Lower Delph, Substation No 11516, 1974

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Park Lane South, Substation No 11039 (No 2), 1974

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Unidentified Substation 1974

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THE END OF INDUSTRY The portraits, televisions, sub stations and urban landscapes occupied me for most of the 1970s. At the end of that decade I was ‘running out of steam’. I was beginning to go out and look for photographs…I had run out of things to say.

The photographs of industry were taken between 1981 and 1988 in ‘a small area of The Black Country’ a part of England that was famous for making things from metal.

Changes occurred in the early 1980s that hit metal manufacturing particularly hard. A record number of bankruptcies resulted in high levels of unemployment. Factories either closed completely or realigned their business model to warehousing and retailing components that had been manufactured overseas. Foundries, forges and steelworks - not easily transformed into industrial units or office space - quickly morphed into housing estates, enterprise zones or retail parks.

I can’t remember why I took the photographs initially. Clearly the distress, upheaval and economic chaos of the early 1980s was sufficient in itself - but it has only been recently that I have begun to realise that in their modest and incomplete way these photographs capture one of the major changes to British landscape and society in the last half of the twentieth century: the end of manufacturing and the emergence of the world of warehousing, logistics, retailing and tarmac.

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Cupolas, Cradley Castings, Cradley Heath, 1983

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Dyson’s Brickworks with Hayseech Foundry, Brierley Hill, 1984

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Hermit Industries, Gornal (No 1), 1983

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Hayseech Foundry and canal, 1983 88

Worker. Cradley Castings, 1983

Housing adjacent to Burton Delingpole & Co. Ltd, Cradley Heath, 1981 Cradley Foundry, Quarry Bank, 1983

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William Mobberley Brickworks, Kingswinford, 1982

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Haulage yard, Lye, 1979

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Sidney Smith Foundry Foundry workmen having a break in amongst the piles of stacked cast metal plates that support manhole covers for roads.

Sidney Smiths Foundry is now a medical health centre.

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Foundry worker, (No 2), 1983

Yard with stacked grates, Sidney Smith & Sons, Stourbridge, 1983

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Pear tree and urn Pear tree and urn, Cradley Foundry, Quarry Bank, always reminds me of Glyndebourne, 1967 by Tony Ray Jones.

It might of course be the tone of the grass in both these photographs but I suppose it’s because they are both about class, status and where we see ourselves in the social order.

Glyndebourne is perfectly realised: the jacket over the chair, the bottle of wine and the lady oblivious to the cattle reading her magazine. And the cattle are perfectly caught, the one on the left just touching the edge of the print oblivious and disinterested in the two diners – and the sheep, (why do sheep always get the bit parts?) as usual playing a supporting role, scattered across the field in the background.

It has all the components and the phrasing of a Giles cartoon.

I don’t think Giles would have ever based a cartoon on anything remotely like pear tree and urn – because at first sight there is ‘nothing there’. Glyndebourne is fine and I can well remember my excitement when I bought my copy of A Day Off, when it was published in 1974. But Glyndebourne now strikes me as clunky and engineered, a visual example of the way that the quaint, the slightly odd and dotty has become a mainstay of how the media and many photographers continue to fuel the notion of the English character.

The urn plays a key role and it took me a good while to realise that the tree is covered in pears…a link to the paintings of Antoine Watteau…possibly…but there again there aren’t any telegraph poles in Watteau.

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Pear tree and urn, Cradley Foundry, Quarry Bank, 1983

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Female brick worker Female brick worker was taken on Valentine’s Day 1983. The low drying shed was cold, almost deserted and lit by a single electric light. I took two shots of the brick worker. Nothing was added or moved.

Her working process is encapsulated in a ‘mountain’ of clay with finger marks, a flattened slab about to be inserted in the mould and the scraper to clean the waste clay away. I recognised instantly the reference to Arthur Munby’s photographs of 19th century pit brow workers. Only the weak electric light, the plastic piny, bucket and the coronation cup locate the photograph to 1983 and not 1883.

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Female brick worker, 1983

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Foundry worker, (No 1), 1983

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Foundry worker, (No 2), 1983

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Entrance to Industrial Estate Taken only a few months apart in 1983 these two photographs of an industrial estate illustrate the slow steady day to day business of making money.

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Entrance to Industrial Estate, (No 1), 1983

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Entrance to Industrial Estate, (No 2), 1983

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The New Landscape Whilst the transformation of the Black Country and its industrial landscape started in the early 1980s the process was uneven and staggered.

New Industrial Estate Lye, dates from the summer of 1981. An area that was known for making nails, anvils and chains now began to feature units that distributed goods from overseas. Industrial Estate Stourbridge, was taken in 1983.

Other companies staggered on but by 1988 almost all the places that I had photographed were either closed or had completely disappeared.

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New Industrial Estate, Lye, 1981

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Industrial Estate, Stourbridge, 1981

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Dralon Centre, Enterprise Zone, 1988

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Selected Biography

2018 Photo London

Born in Bradford, 1944

Distinctly Britain, Pingyao, China

MA History of Art & Design, University of Central England, Birmingham, 1995

2017

BA Fine Art, University of Newcastle. 1963-67

A Green and Pleasant Land, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne Foto/Industria, Bologna

Lives in Stourbridge, West Midlands

2016 The Teen Years, Joseph Bellows Gallery, California

Solo Exhibitions

2013 The Photographers Wall, Library of Birmingham

2019 Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris

2008-10 Unpopular Culture, Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council

2017-18

Collection, Touring

The World is Not Beautiful, Hatfield, Luton, Wolverhampton 1973 2014

Serpentine Photography, Serpentine Gallery, London

33 Portraits, 14 boring photographs, 10 televisions, 8 Substations, 6 houses, 1 furniture store, & One Giraffe, Gallery of Photography Ireland, Dublin

Publications

2011-12

2019

John Myers Middle England, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

The End of Industry, RRB Photobooks Home Sweet Home, Textuel, Paris Looking at the Overlooked,

Group Exhibitions

RRB Photobooks

2020

2018

Zusammenleben, Kunsthalle, Darmstadt

The Portraits, RRB Photobooks

Facing Britain, Museum Goch Peter Mitchell & John Myers,

2017

Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris

The End of Manufacturing, Café Royal Books Foto/Industria, MAST. Electa, Bologna

2019

2016

Home Sweet Home, Arles, Lille

The World is Not Beautiful, UH Galleries, Hatfield

Paris Photo

Pylot 4

BLAST Photo Festival, Sandwell Look Photo Biennial, Liverpool,

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2014

2014

The Photography Book, Phaidon

Irish Post, Exhibition capturing 1970s Birmingham goes on show, Fiona Audley, 10 March

2008 Unpopular Culture, Hayward Gallery, London

2012 New York Times 6th Floor blog, Forty Years Later a Photographer

1982

finally gets his show, Stacey Baker

Pau Hill, Approaching Photography, Focal Press

Francis Hodgson, John Myers – Middle England, Writing about

Chris Steele-Perkins, About 70 Photographs, Arts Council of

Photographs, francishodgson.com, 9 March

Great Britain

Simon Denison, An Unacknowledged Pioneer, Source Magazine, Spring 2012

1976

Guardian, My Best Shot, 5 April

Seeing the Unseen, The High Speed Photography of D. Harold E Edgerton, self-published

2011 The British Journal of Photography, 16 November

1975

Birmingham post, Another decade, another land, Lorne Jackson

British Image 1, Arts Council of Great Britain

10 November

1974

1979

Middle England, self published

John Taylor, Photography and Fiction, 10 ∙ 8 Photography Magazine

Articles, reviews, etcetera

1974 The London Magazine

2019

Creative Camera

The Observer, Black Country Blues, Tim Adams, 8 September Looking at the Overlooked, (interview) American Suburb X,

1973

americansuburx.com

Camera, July

2018 Financial Times, Dungarees to Donny Osmond, 6 April, 2018

Collections

The Guardian, Portraits of Middle England, 12 April The New Yorker, An Under recognized Portrait Photographer

Arts Council Collection,

captures the essence of Britishness, Rebecca Mead, 24 April The British Journal of Photography, Looking at the Overlooked,

Victoria and Albert Museum,

14 December Library of Birmingham, 2015 Flat, Dead, Boring Light, (interview) American Suburb X,

James Hyman collection,

americansuburx.com Martin Parr Foundation.

111

Thanks to: Josie Atkinson, Lucy Bliszko, Mike Crawford, Tom Groves, Louis Little, Eleanor Macnair, Madeline Myers, Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski, Rudi Thoemmes

112

The photographs were taken on a 5 x 4 Gandolfi plate camera using either a 135mm, 150mm or 180mm lens. The film was TRI-X or HP4 rated at 320 ASA and slightly underdeveloped. Typically I would take one shot per subject and a spare shot to use as a test in the processing.

113

RRB Photobooks, April 2021 Photographs and Text © John Myers Design © Jessamine Thoemmes-Tondowski Image Production by Bread & Butter Studio Printed at Taylor Brothers, Bristol, UK ISBN 978-1-9160575-7-9

rrbphotobooks.com