Daniel Meadows Explained

Daniel Meadows (born 1952) is an English photographer turned maker of digital stories, and a teacher of photography turned teacher of participatory media.

Life and career as photographer

Meadows was born in Great Washbourne, Gloucestershire, "in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the Cotswolds", on 28 January 1952. Both of his parents had Suffolk origins; his father was a land agent for the Dumbleton Estate, in which the family lived; his mother developed multiple sclerosis when Daniel was young and this gradually became more acute. He spent his early years without television.[1]

With Peter Fraser, Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Martin Parr, Meadows studied at Manchester Polytechnic.[2] (Meadows' 1972 series June Street was a collaboration with Parr.[3]) While a student he was particularly inspired by a lecture by Bill Jay (editor of Creative Camera and Album) and an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Bill Brandt.

Meadows was living in the Moss Side area of Manchester during termtime, and was aware of its impending demolition. With its many small shops, Moss Side might, he thought, support a "picture shop", so he rented a barber's on Greame Street from January 1972, inviting people to come into the Free Photographic Shop to have their photographs taken for no charge. Two months later he had run out of money and had to close but had gained useful experience.[4]

Inspired by what Bill Jay had said about Benjamin Stone's travel around Britain by horse-drawn caravan, Meadows thought of a mobile version of the Greame Street studio; the Cliff Richard film Summer Holiday suggested a solution. He worked at Butlin's Holiday Camp at Filey during summer 1972 to pay for the publicity materials with which he hoped to get Arts Council and other funding for the purchase and one year's use of a double-decker bus.[5] [6] He succeeded and for 14 months from September 1973 travelled around England in the Free Photographic Omnibus, a 1947 Leyland PD1 bus whose seats had been removed to make space for a darkroom and living quarters: its windows were used as the gallery.[7] [8] Meadows took this to twenty or more towns. Some of this work was published in Meadows' first book, Living Like This (1975), which combined Meadows' photographs and text with first-person accounts of those he had talked with.

Among the photographs of this series is Portsmouth: John Payne, aged 12, with two friends and his pigeon, Chequer, 26 April 1974.[9] Payne, holding his pigeon in the centre of the photograph, told Meadows that he caught and bred pigeons.[10] Paul Cabuts writes that:

The photograph, like many other photographs in the exhibition [''No Such Thing as Society''], offers a window on a lost world, one that is difficult to perceive without considerable culturally-specific contextualisation. Meadows' photograph is however a masterstroke in providing clues about the life and times of those recorded through his lens. The boys became the subject, although the pigeon had been the vehicle for this particular engagement. In offering up their pigeon (the photograph was taken at their request), we enter a world of friendship and pride, the social activities on a working class housing estate. . . .[11]

With its echo of Ken Loach's film Kes, the photograph was widely reproduced.[12] It was the cover photograph of the 1975 Arts Council anthology British Image 1 and the photograph on the poster for and catalogue of the 2008 travelling Hayward exhibition No Such Thing as Society.

In 1979 Meadows presented an episode of the Granada TV arts series Celebration that focussed on photographers Charlie Meecham and Chris Killip.[13] Meadows went on to photograph the northwest of England in the 1970s, including the people around Factory Records,[14] and in the 1980s he went on to study the residents of a middle-class London suburb (Bromley,[15] although not specified at the time), the latter published as Nattering in Paradise.

Career as teacher and digital storyteller

Meadows became interested in teaching while photographing in Lancashire in the 1970s; in 1983 David Hurn invited him to help teach the Documentary Photography course at Newport College of Art and Design. From 1994 he has taught at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.[16] His students there have included Tim Hetherington.[17] In the 1990s, he led photojournalism workshops for the Reuters Foundation, the British Council, and other organisations in Europe and the Indian subcontinent.[18]

Meadows' interest in participatory media was greatly influenced by Ivan Illich's ideas as presented in Tools for Conviviality; and his interest in digital storytelling influenced by, successively, Pedro Meyer's I Photograph to Remember, Meyer's ZoneZero website, and the NextExit website of Dana Atchley of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) at UCB. Meadows taught an undergraduate course titled "Digital Storytelling and Photography" and also contemplated ways of adding digital storytelling to the website he was building about the Free Photographic Omnibus and the later lives of the people this had depicted. Meadows corresponded with Dana Atchley and arranged to attend one of the "boot camps" held by Atchley, Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen. Atchley was too ill to appear, but at the camp and a subsequent event at Ben Lomond he learned and exchanged ideas.[19] [20]

From 2001 to 2006 Meadows was creative director of Capture Wales, a BBC Wales project: "[he] accomplished an innovative reworking of the Californian [CDS] model, adapting it to the 'media ecology' of UK public broadcasting".[21]

Since this time Meadows has also lectured widely about digital storytelling.

Photographic archive

In August 2014, Meadows' photographic archive was described as being in the process of acquisition by the Library of Birmingham:[22] "Meadows established a relationship with a collecting institution with specialist expertise and resources",[23] receiving much help from Pete James, the library's Curator of Photography Collections, and Val Williams.[24] [25] With a drastic cut of funds to the Library of Birmingham, its ability to continue to archive the work seemed doubtful.[26]

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford acquired the archive in March 2018.[27] In autumn 2019, the Bodleian celebrated the acquisition with an exhibition of Meadows' work, Now and Then, accompanied by a book.[28]

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Joint and group exhibitions

Permanent collections

Publications

Books of work by Meadows

Zines of work by Meadows

Other appearances

Awards

Notes

  1. The Bus, 63–67; Meadows' description of Great Washbourne is on p.65.
  2. Web site: The Daniel Meadows Archives . 2011-01-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120303094927/http://www.photographyresearchcentre.co.uk/project/node/25 . 3 March 2012 . dmy-all ., PARC Projects, Photography and the Archive Research Centre.
  3. Phil Coomes, "Daniel Meadows on digital literacy", BBC News in Pictures, 15 November 2011. Accessed 2 May 2012.
  4. Daniel Meadows, Living Like This, pp. 9–10.
  5. Meadows, Living Like This, p.12.
  6. David Allan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967–87: From the British Council and the Arts Council Collection (London: Hayward, 2007), p.32.
  7. Meadows, Living Like This, pp. 14, 16.
  8. The bus survives, in the possession of The Transport Museum, Wythall. In April 2014 it was described as "being renovated and restored" ("Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works ", Royal Photographic Society). The Transport Museum has shown the bus ("From Our Collection: Barton JRR 404", as retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 25 February 2015), describing it as built in 1948.
  9. The title has been given in various forms; this is how it appears on the copyright page and p.32 of No Such Thing as Society (2007).
  10. British Image 1, p.40 (the photograph appears opposite, and is titled John Payne from Portsmouth, aged 12); Living Like This, p.61 (the photograph appears on the same page, and, like many in the book, is not given a title).
  11. Paul Cabuts, "Three boys and a pigeon: Photography in Wales", Planet 196. Reproduced here on Cabuts' site. Accessed 3 November 2010.
  12. [David Alan Mellor]
  13. Web site: Foldworks. More about Charlie's Photograph.... live. Foldworks. https://web.archive.org/web/20210921150708/https://foldworks.org/blog/2018/4/9/more-about-charlies-photograph-for-the-joy-division-lp-atmosphere . 21 September 2021 .
  14. Web site: Cafe Royal. Daniel Meadows - Factory Records 1979-1980. live. Cafe Royal Books. https://web.archive.org/web/20210520114809/https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/daniel-meadows-factory-records-19791980 . 20 May 2021 .
  15. [Val Williams]
  16. David Alan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967–1987: From the British Council and the Arts Council Collection (London: Hayward Publishing, 2007), 217.
  17. Tim Hetherington, "The Big Issue", Source. Accessed 1 November 2010.
  18. Potted biography, "Artists ", Projections of Reality. Accessed 1 November 2010.
  19. Daniel Meadows, "The Electric Engagement", pp. 94–96 within Daniel Meadows and Jenny Kidd, "Capture Wales: The BBC Digital Storytelling Project"; in John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam, eds, Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2009;), pp. 91–117.
  20. Therese Nolan-Brown, Web site: Digital storytelling at QUT: A survey of digital storytelling projects and activities . 2011-01-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20091002011101/http://digitalstorytelling.ci.qut.edu.au/pdfs/DST_SURVEY_PDF.pdf . 2 October 2009 . dmy-all . (PDF), Queensland University of Technology, 10 May 2008.
  21. John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam, "Computational Power Meets Human Contact", in Hartley and McWilliam, eds, Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World, p.6.
  22. Web site: Daniel Meadows at the Library of Birmingham. 12 August 2014 . 8 January 2015 . Gemma . Padley . Apptitude Media . .
  23. "Daniel Meadows: Key points from the case study", Photographers' Archives and Legacy Project. Accessed 7 October 2019.
  24. Daniel Meadows, "The Archive", Photobus. Accessed 7 October 2019.
  25. Diane Smyth, "Obituary: Pete James, Curator of Photography Collections at the Library of Birmingham, 1958 - 2018", British Journal of Photography, 14 March 2018. Accessed 7 October 2019.
  26. In a note within his page "The Archive", Meadows points the reader to a December 2014 article by Francis Hodgson, "Another one bites the dust", which describes the importance to British photographic history of the Library and the gravity of the Library's situation.
  27. Michael Pritchard, "The Daniel Meadows Archive: An update", British Photo History, 2 February 2019. Accessed 7 October 2019.
  28. "Britain then and now captured in unique exhibition by pioneering documentary photographer Daniel Meadows", Bodleian Libraries, 10 September 2019. Accessed 4 October 2019.
  29. Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240, 241.
  30. Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240, 243.
  31. Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240.
  32. Invitation card from the Photographers' Gallery for a private viewing of "Suburbia", "The World Over" (George Rodger) and "Incurably Romantic" (Bernard Stehle).
  33. [Val Williams]
  34. http://galleryofphotography.ie/exhibitions/ List of past exhibitions
  35. Robert Murphy, "Going back to the Future", Evening Standard, 18 May 2001. Accessed 6 June 2014.
  36. https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/daniel-meadows-early-photographic-works Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works
  37. Liz Jobey, Web site: Street life . 2011-11-04 . deviated . https://web.archive.org/web/20110904172344/http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/9502fab6-d374-11e0-9d6a-00144feab49a.html . 4 September 2011 . dmy-all ., Financial Times, 2 September 2011.
  38. http://www.redeye.org.uk/exhibition/daniel-meadows-early-photographic-works Exhibition notice
  39. http://www.ffotogallery.org/daniel-meadows-early-photographic-works Exhibition notice
  40. Ben Miller, "Pioneer Daniel Meadows enjoys retrospective in Early Photographic Works at Ffotogallery", culture24.org, 11 July 2012. Accessed 6 June 2014.
  41. "Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works", Library of Birmingham. Accessed 2014-06-06.
  42. Web site: Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works . 5 October 2015 . . 6 October 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20151006132015/http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2015/9/24/Daniel-Meadows-Early-Photographic-Works/?_ga=1.148639604.2141320899.1439384170 . dead .
  43. Kelly Richman-Abdou, "Photographer captures portraits of strangers he met on the streets 25 years later". My Modern Met, 16 September 2019. Accessed 4 October 2019.
  44. Michael Pritchard, "Publication/Exhibition: Now and Then, Daniel Meadows / Oxford, from 4 October 2019", British Photographic History, 26 August 2019. Accessed 4 October 2019.
  45. Williams, Daniel Meadows, 239.
  46. Serpentine Photography 73: The Arts Council Presents Work by 43 Young Photographers (London: Serpentine Gallery, 1973). Exhibition catalogue.
  47. "The Other Britain Revisited: Photographs from New Society", Victoria and Albert Museum, 2010. Accessed 2 May 2010.
  48. [Val Williams]
  49. http://www.kunsthal.nl/22-531-Look-at-me.html Exhibition notice
  50. Blake Morrison, "Think of England", Guardian, 19 May 2007. Accessed 6 June 2014.
  51. Benjamin Secher, "Portraits of a strange land", Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2007. Accessed 22 January 2010.
  52. http://www.bulgergallery.com/dynamic/fr_exhibit_press_release.asp?ExhibitID=136 Exhibition notice
  53. David Balzer, Web site: The Prince of Tides . 2011-01-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070210111306/http://www.torontolife.com/features/prince-tides/ . 10 February 2007 . dmy-all ., Toronto Life, January 2007.
  54. http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-aad-no-such-thing-as-society.htm Press release
  55. [Jon Savage]
  56. http://projectionsofreality.org/en/artists/projects/ List of projects
  57. Карина Абдусаламова, "Проекции реальности: столкновения с (не)знакомым ", Vostok Inform. Accessed 1 November 2010.
  58. "Негатив в шоколаде", Kommersant. Accessed 1 November 2010.
  59. http://fotonow.org/past_projects_explore/22 Exhibition archive
  60. http://issuu.com/macarts123/docs/summerbrochure_2011 Mac Birmingham Summer Brochure 1011
  61. Web site: The Art Fund helps Birmingham Central Library secure important photographic legacy for the nation . 2011-01-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100619041205/http://www.artfund.org/news/816 . 19 June 2010 . dmy-all ., the Art Fund, 10 February 2009.
  62. "Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works ", Royal Photographic Society, April 2014. Accessed 6 June 2014.
  63. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?listing_type=&offset=0&limit=15&narrow=&q=Daniel+Meadows&commit=Search&quality=0&objectnamesearch=&placesearch=&after=&after-adbc=AD&before=&before-adbc=AD&namesearch=&materialsearch=&mnsearch=&locationsearch= Search results
  64. A review of The Bus: David Heathcote, "Another look at British identity", Eye, Autumn 2001.
  65. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304075455/http://shop.photoworks.org.uk/collections/photobooks/products/photographs-from-the-70s-and-80s-daniel-meadows Photoworks' page (as retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 4 March 2016) about Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s
  66. https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/now-and-then-england-1970-2015 The Bodleian Libraries' page about Now and Then
  67. https://bluecoatpress.co.uk/product/book-of-the-road/ Bluecoat's page about Book of the Road.
  68. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/stockport-gypsies-1971-daniel-meadows-070115/ Café Royal's page about Stockport Gypsies 1971
  69. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/bancroft-shed-weaving-1976-daniel-meadows-190215/ Café Royal's page about Bancroft Shed Weaving 1976
  70. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/bancroft-shed-engine-house-1976-daniel-meadows-190315/ Café Royal's page about Bancroft Shed Engine House 1976
  71. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/weldone-boiler-fluers-daniel-meadows/ Café Royal's page about Weldone Boiler Fluers 1976–1977
  72. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/steeplejack-1976-daniel-meadows-300415/ Café Royal's page about Steeplejack 1976
  73. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/pig-killing-19751976-daniel-meadows-280515/ Café Royal's page about Pig Killing 1975–1976
  74. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/welfare-state-international/ Café Royal's page about Welfare State International 1976–1983
  75. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/clayton-ward-1978-daniel-meadows/ Café Royal's page about Clayton Ward 1978
  76. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/eight-stories-daniel-meadows-230715/ Café Royal's page about Eight Stories
  77. https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/daniel-meadows-eight-stories-one-limited-edition-boxset Café Royal's page about Eight Stories + One
  78. http://www.caferoyalbooks.com/#/the-shop-on-greame-street-1972-daniel-meadows-250816-600/ Café Royal's page about The Shop on Greame Street 1972
  79. https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/testimony-february-1987-daniel-meadows Café Royal's page about Testimony February 1987
  80. https://www.caferoyalbooks.com/shop/graffiti-19711983-daniel-meadows Café Royal's page about Graffiti 1971–1983
  81. Web site: Daniel Meadows awarded RPS Fellowship . 2011-01-18 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120220192843/http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/newsandevents/news/08danielmeadowsfellowship.html . 20 February 2012 . dmy-all ., Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies, 22 September 2008.

External links

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