During the early ’70s, Wales-based photographer Daniel Meadows captured the people of Britain on film. Now he’s teamed up with Professor Val Williams, who’s researching British photography during that decade, for a new exhibition. Karen Price asks him some questions…
Q: Tell me how your collaboration with Professor Val Williams for the new exhibition at Penarth-based Ffotogallery came about.
A: She has championed my work since the ’70s and gave me my first show at Impressions Gallery in York in 1972 – Butlin’s By The Sea with Martin Parr. She ran Impressions with her husband Andrew Sproxton (who died in 1978). It was the first photography gallery outside London and my show with Martin was their first exhibition.
Q: What are the aims of the show?
A: This exhibition is very much Val Williams’ project. She has selected all the pictures and decided how it should look. She sees what I did all those years ago as pioneering. She thinks that people today have something to learn from it.
Thankfully she is not alone: Ffotogallery and Birmingham Central Library have contributed to funding and touring the exhibition. Also the National Media Museum in Bradford where it showed last winter and almost 40,000 people came to see it. So it’s clear that visitors do get a lot out of it.
Q: When you look at the images now, how do you feel about the way the country has changed?
A: The country is only as fine as its people and people need to be cherished. I don’t think we’re very good at that, are we?
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