2012
Daniel Meadows' Free Photographic Omnibus Northern Arts Exhibition 1974
Side Gallery, 9 Side, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 3JE, 20 October - 22 December.
During his travels around England in 1973-74 Meadows created six exhibitions, each one specific to its region and handmade in duplicate; one set was mounted in the windows of the bus (these suffered from condensation damage and were destroyed when taken down), the other set was given to his relevant sponsoring organisation for showing in public libraries and other local venues. It is thought that this set, made for Northern Arts in December 1974 and now in the Side's permanent collection, is the only one that survives.
Observers: Photographers of the British Scene from the 1930’s to now
Galeria de Arte do Sesi, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 25 September - 25 November.
Curated for the British Council by João Kulcsár in Sao Paulo and Martin Caiger-Smith in London, this is the largest show presented in Latin America of British photography of the last 80 years. It takes its inspiration from the Mass Observation movement and features 240 photographs by 36 photographers: Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, Humphrey Spender, George Rodger, Paul Nash, Madame Yevonde, Nigel Henderson, Roger Mayne, Ida Kar, Norman Parkinson, Terence Donovan, Ian Berry, Shirley Baker, Tony Ray-Jones, Raymond Moore, Paul Trevor, Tish Murtha, Daniel Meadows, Chris Killip, Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Keith Arnatt, Anna Fox, Derek Ridgers, Peter Fraser, Jem Southam, Karen Knorr, Richard Billingham, Paul Seawright, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jason Evans, Nigel Shafran, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Sarah Jones, John Duncan, Gareth McConnell. Meadows is represented with four portraits from the Free Photographic Omnibus.
Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works
Ffotogallery, Turner House, Plymouth Road, Penarth, Cardiff, Wales, CF64 3DH, 14 July - 8 September.
The touring version of Meadows' major retrospective. Curated by Val Williams, this exhibition had its first showing at the National Media Museum (NMeM) where, between 30 September 2011 and 19 February 2012, it was seen by 39,633 visitors making it one of the most popular shows at NMeM in recent years. Its Cardiff opening on Friday 13 July doubled as Meadows' retirement party from Cardiff University where he taught for 18 years (1994-2012). Read the Western Mail interview.
"Daniel Meadows was one of a group of photographers who spearheaded the independent photography movement in the early 1970s, breaking with tradition and infusing the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. His practice is complex, passionate and sometimes deeply autobiographical. Between 1971 and 1987, he produced an astonishing record of urban society in Britain, working in a uniquely collaborative way through his interviews with – and writing about – his subjects."
The exhibition, which will continue to tour, is funded and supported by a partnership between the National Media Museum, Bradford; Ffotogallery, Cardiff; Birmingham Central Libraries; Photography and the Archive Research Centre, University of the Arts London; and Photoworks UK; with exhibition prints by Metro Imaging, London.
It coincides with the publication of a new book from Photoworks. Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s by Val Williams.
"From the remarkable free photographic studio on Greame Street in Moss Side to his study of suburbia, Meadows emerges as a powerful and engaging documentarist and an incisive commentator on his times."
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-903796-46-7
The World in London
The Photographers' Gallery, London. An Olympic Games tie-in project which showed in duplicate: at Victoria Park, London E3, 27 July - 12 August; and at Park House, 453 - 497 Oxford Street, London, W1, 27 July - 30 August. Work by 204 British and International photographers showed portraits of Londoners. Each depicted a person or people from one of the 204 nations taking part in London 2012, accompanied by individual stories. Meadows photographed Dr Stephen Ng MBE, born in Hong Kong in 1952.
Picture: Harry Meadows
GROUP SHOWS DATE BACK TO 1973
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2011
A Record of England
MAC, Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham, 28 May - 17 July. This exhibition of work by Daniel Meadows and Homer Sykes, drawn from the photography collections at Birmingham Central Library, provided an historical context for Simon Roberts' We English (showing in the Arena Gallery), revealed much about the history of England in the 1970s and explored the shifts and transformations of the representation of Englishness in the modern era.
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2010
Anyhow, Anywhere
Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), Bristol, 7 December – 31 January 2011. An exploration of the transition from teenager to adult. Teddy girls by Ken Russell, Twiggy by Barry Lategan, portraits from the Free Photographic Omnibus by Daniel Meadows; also contributions from Beezer, Haroon Iltaf, Huw Davies and young women photographers based at KWMC.
FOTONOW: Cameras in the Community
Plymouth, 23 October - 23 December 2010. Plymouth Arts Centre.
From The Guardian Guide: Saturday 13 November 2010.
The Other Britain Revisited: Photographs from New Society
London, 14 May - 26 September. V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum). Documentary photographs from 1962 to 1982, originally published in the pioneering magazine New Society. The show featured 49 pictures by 23 photographers who captured the diversity of life in Britain and pivotal social issues in the late twentieth century.
Picture: Millworker on lunch break at Moderna blanket factory at Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, published New Society, 3.2.1977, pp.221-222, The End of a Mill by Tom Forester, photo: Daniel Meadows.
Projections of Reality
ПРОЕКЦИИ РЕАЛЬНОСТИ
Moscow, 6 March - 4 April, 2010. An exhibition of multimedia projections based on documentary material. Curated by Liza Faktor and Jamie Wellford. Red October (the old chocolate factory), Bersenevskaya Embankment.
Daniel Meadows' The Bus was included as a pioneering example of the value system which informs all the multimedia narratives in this show having, as they do, a 'concern for social issues based in the values of humanism'. The exhibition featured work by more than 20 photographers who use multimedia production techniques including multi-channel video installations, web-based projects, and interactive documentaries. Among those taking part:
Christopher Anderson of Magnum: Silicon Forest,
Samuel Bolendorff: Journey to the End of Coal,
Todd Heisler and the New York Times: One in Eight Million,
Henrik Kastenskov: The Afghan Diaries,
Brenda Ann Kenneally: The Raw File,
Paolo Pellegrin of Magnum: Wall Street,
*Tim Hetherington: Sleeping Soldiers.
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*In Memoriam: Tim Hetherington (1970-2011) studied photojournalism under Meadows and Colin Jacobson at Cardiff in the 1990s. He reported on conflict for over ten years, most notably in Liberia and Afghanistan. He was the recipient of four World Press Photo prizes, including World Press Photo of the year 2007. With Sebastian Junger he made the film Restrepo - One Platoon, One Year, One Valley winning the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary and being nominated for an Oscar in 2011. He was killed in Misrata, Libya, 20 April 2011, while covering the Arab spring.
Tribute
Obituary
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2008
Knight of the Camera - The Photographs of Sir Benjamin Stone
Centenary Square, Birmingham: 20 September - 30 October.
Curator: Peter James.
A Birmingham Central Libraries exhibition which included a Benjamin Stone Legacy selection of pictures by Anna Fox, Daniel Meadows, Tony Ray-Jones and Homer Sykes.
Radical Mayhem: Welfare State International and its followers
Mid Pennine Gallery, Burnley: 26 April - 7 June.
Curator: Gillian Whiteley.
A Mid Pennine Arts exhibition exploring the work and legacy of this collective of radical artists, musicians and performers who pioneered the idea of site-specific multimedia theatre and continued to develop alternative models of participative art in Britain from 1968-2006. Daniel Meadows photographed Welfare State International between 1975 and 1983.
No Such Thing As Society
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales: 15 March - 27 April.
A Hayward Gallery, London, international touring show. 130 documentary photographs made in Britain 1967-1987, chosen from the collections of the Arts Council and the British Council.
Curator: David Alan Mellor.
The work of 34 photographers was shown including 6 pictures by Daniel Meadows from the Free Photographic Omnibus.
The show's poster, as well as the jacket design of the accompanying book, revisited the Arts Council's 1975 publication British Image 1 reproducing a Daniel Meadows photograph taken in Portsmouth on 26 April 1974: John Payne, aged 12, with two friends and his pigeon Chequer.
Listen to a recording of Meadows' 1974 encounter with the three lads in the picture. Click on the player (r/t: 2 min, 50 sec):
- Tuille House, Carlisle: 10 May -13 July
- Leeds City Art Gallery: 19 July − 31 August
- The Exchange, Penzance: 12 September − 1 November
- Centre for Contemporary Arts, Ujazdowski Castle, Wawsaw, Poland: 24 November 2008 - 11 January 2009
- Arbatets Museum, Norrkoping, Sweden: 31 January − 31 May 2009 (see newspaper report)
- National Museum Wales, Cardiff: 4 July − 4 October 2009
- Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne: 31 October 2009 − 24 January 2010
On Time, East Wing Collection VIII
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London: 26 Jan 2008 - 26 July 2009
The biennial student-curated contemporary art show featuring the work of up-and-coming artists alongside that of well-known established names. Meadows contributed a selection from National Portraits: Now and Then.
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2007
YOU_ser: das jahrhundert des konsumenten
ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie), Karlsruhe, Germany: 21 October - 31 December 2008.
Story Box section curated by Michael Mangold.
The Centre for Art and Media celebrated its tenth anniversary with a large exhibition entitled The Century of the Consumer which looked at the effect of net-based global creation on art and society. Meadows contributed his Digital Story Polyfoto alongside stories from BBC Capture Wales.
How We Are - Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present
Tate Britain, London: 22 May - 2 September.
Curated by Val Williams and Susan Bright.
This was the first time Tate had addressed Britain's photographic history. The work of more than 130 photographers was shown, including a sequenced high-definition screening of the 41 portraits in National Portraits: Photographs from the 1970s by Daniel Meadows (Viewpoint & Montage, 1997).
Reviewing the Tate show for BBC Radio 4's Front Row, novelist Esther Freud chose this work as her "stand out" piece. She said: "It was incredibly moving... [Daniel Meadows] took these incredible very straight-forward photographs of people in their 'seventies clothes and, at the time after he'd done it, no one felt that they were particularly interesting or strange enough but now, looking at them, they're fascinating and they are certainly strange."
The British Are Coming
Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, Canada: 11 January - 10 February.
A selection of Meadows’s prints from the Free Photographic Omnibus, purchased by the gallery from a collector, was exhibited alongside pictures by Chris Coekin and Tony Ray-Jones.
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2006
First Person: International Digital Storytelling Exhibition
Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne, Australia: 1 February - 30 April.
Curated by Helen Simondson to accompany First Person: Digital Storytelling Conference 3 - 5 February. An exhibition of diverse narratives from the global digital storytelling network including stories by Daniel Meadows and the BBC Capture Wales project.
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2003
A Seaside Album: Photographs and Memory
Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton: 10 May - 8 October.
Curated from his own collection by Philippe Garner.
Photographs of Brighton down the years, along with accompanying book by the same title, including two Daniel Meadows portraits from the Free Photographic Omnibus.
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1999
Documents and Identities
Käsi-ja Taideteollisuuskeskus Verkaranta gallery, Tampere, Finland: 22 October - 8 November 1999.
The main exhibition of Backlight, the 5th International Photography Triennale, Tampere, Finland.
Meadows contributed a pair of pictures from National Portraits: Now & Then.
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1998
Les Anglais Vus par les Anglais
Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France: 9 July.
Curator: Gabriel Bauret.
Open air screening before an audience of 2,000, a multimedia presentation about contemporary English photography. It opened with a series of portraits from the Free Photographic Omnibus, the work being seen as an exemplar for subsequent generations of independent pratitioners.
Look At Me
Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands: 16 May - 9 August.
Curators: Brett Rogers and Val Williams.
Fashion and Photography in Britain 1960 to the Present, a British Council international touring show. Work by 37 photographers including a set of 6 portraits from Meadows' Free Photographic Omnibus.
- Foundation Trussardi, Marina Alla Scala Art Centre, Milan, Italy: 11 January - 14 February 1999
- Centre for Contemporary Arts, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland: 2 March - 6 April 1999
- Mali Manezh, Moscow, Russia: 21 April - 10 May 1999
- State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, Peter and Paul Fortress, St Petersburg, Russia: late May - 16 October 1999
- Tallinna Kunstihoone Fond, Tallinn Estonia: 5 November - 5 December 1999
- Øksnehallen, Copenhagen, Denmark: 7 - 30 January 2000
- Museu de Documantiato I Museu Textil, Terrassa, Spain: 6 April - 31 May 2000
- Recinto Ciudadela, Pamplona, Spain: 24 June - 15 July 2000
- Palacio de Abrantes, Salamanca, Spain: 28 August - 7 October 2000
- Month of Photography, House of Art, Bratislava, Slovakia: November 2000
- Milton Keynes Gallery, 14th July to 2nd September 2001
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1986
A Woman's Place: The Changing Picture of Women in Britain
GLC Royal Festival Hall, London: 2 - 30 April 1984
Curator: Diana Souhami
'The position of women in Britain is changing slowly but surely: a quiet revolution is taking place in every aspect of their lives.' A British Council touring show which travelled to 30 different countries. Work by many photographers including by Meadows from his artist-in-residence period in Lancashire: women in hairdresser's, weavers on a tea-break.
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1985
Human Interest: Fifty Years of British Art about People
Cornerhouse, Manchester: 3 October - 17 November.
Curated by Norbert Lynton.
This inaugural exhibition of a new gallery explored the human image in painting, photography, sculpture and video in the work of 110 artists including Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Bill Brandt, Lucien Freud, Richard Hamilton, Don McCullin, Tony Ray-Jones and Stanley Spencer. Meadows’s contribution was from the Arts Council of Great Britain collection: Pylon Painters, Great Washbourne, Gloucestershire, 1974.
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1984
The Welsh Open
Ffotogallery, Cardiff: 13 September - 6 October.
Portraits selected by Angus McBean.
Meadows contributed a portrait of his three-year-old son Harry, sleeping.
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1983
And The North
Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal: 15 October - 12 November.
A commission by Northern Arts.
Curator: Dave Watt.
Northern Arts commissioned 13 photographers – including Paul Graham, Martin Parr and Roger Palmer – to tackle a variety of themes. Meadows contributed Paid to Care, a set of pictures showing Spennymoor and district, Co. Durham, from the point of view of its social workers.
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1982
The Other Britain
Olivier Foyer, the National Theatre, London: 18 October - 27 November.
New Society magazine 20th anniversary exhibition, later acquired for its permanent collection by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London.
Curator: Paul Barker
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1973
Serpentine Photography 73
Serpentine Gallery, London: 28 July - 19 August 1973.
Curator: Peter Turner.
A young contemporaries show. Work by 43 photographers. Meadows contributed portraits shot in collaboration with Martin Parr showing residents of June Street, Salford; and a large (6ft high) picture of a boy at Butlin’s Filey. He also shot some free portraits of gallery visitors, mostly on Polaroid (instant print) film.
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SOLO EXHIBITIONS DATE BACK TO 1972
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2001
National Portraits: Now & Then
Photofusion, Brixton, London: 18 May - 30 June.
A stripped down version of the Irish Gallery of Photography exhibition, shown to coincide with publication of book The Bus, The Free Photographic Omnibus 1973-2001, an adventure in documentary, Daniel Meadows (The Harvill Press, 2001).
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2000
National Portraits: Photographs from the 1970s by Daniel Meadows shown together with National Portraits: Now & Then
Irish Gallery of Photography, Dublin: 6 - 29 April.
Curator: Tanya Kiang
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1999
National Portraits: Now & Then
Tampere University as part of Backlight, the 5th International Photography Triennale, Tampere, Finland: 11 - 29 October.
International touring show of photographs and re-photographs of some of those who were pictured from the Free Photographic Omnibus. Portraits arranged in pairs: "then" (1970s) and "now" (1990s).
- L'Association Photographie E, Tarbes, France: 4 to 29 March 2000
- Fondazione Studio Marangoni, Florence, Italy: April 2000
- Libreria Agorà, Turin, Italy: 2 July - 30 September 2000
- Photography Festival, Hereford, England: 21 October - 18 November 2000
- Cultural Precinct, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland, Australia: 27 October - 18 December 2001
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1997
National Portraits: Photographs from the 1970s by Daniel Meadows
Viewpoint Gallery, Salford: 2 April - 11 May.
Curator: Val Williams.
A selection of 110 portraits from the Free Photographic Omnibus, re-presented a quarter of a century after their making. Shown to coincide with publication of book National Portraits - Photographs from the 1970s by Daniel Meadows, edited by Val Williams. (Salford: Viewpoint Photography Gallery, and Derby: Montage Gallery, 1997).
- The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (NMPFT), Bradford: 19 July - 25 August
- Montage Gallery, Derby: 7 October - 7 December
- Shoreditch Biennale, London: 7 May - 5 June 1998
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1996
Set Pieces
Royal Photographic Society, Bath: 26 October - 24 November.
Curator: Carole Sartain.
About the work of a movie stills photographer, part of the RPS series Images of British Cinema.
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1987
Nattering in Paradise
Photographers' Gallery, London: 10 September - 9 October 1987.
Curator: Alex Noble.
Photographs about life in contemporary suburbia.
Olivier Gallery, National Theatre, London: 21 March - 30 April 1988, shown to coincide with publication of book Nattering In Paradise - A Word from the Suburbs, Daniel Meadows (Simon & Schuster, 1988).
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1983
Pure Gold
Posterngate Gallery, Hull: 16 July - 20 August.
Colour photographs of workers at Wolstenholme Bronze Powders, Darwen, Lancashire.
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1982
Julian Bream, a Life on the Road
Impressions Gallery of Photography, York: 13 August - 11 September.
Curator: Frances Middlestrob.
An Impressions Gallery touring show. Photographs of a year in the life of classical guitarist Julian Bream.
- Maxwell House, London: 30 September, shown to coincide with publication of book: Julian Bream - A Life on the Road, Tony Palmer (Macdonald, 1982).
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1981
Daniel Meadows (aka Behind the Screens)
Uppermill Gallery, Oldham: 11 April - 5 May.
Curator: Charles Meecham.
Photographs about people making and watching television programmes.
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1978
Clayton Ward
Impressions Gallery of Photography, York: July.
Curator: Val Williams.
Photographs taken at Prestwich Psychiatric Hospital, Manchester, of an experiment to rehabilitate long-term schizophrenics.
Shuttles, Steam and Soot - A Cotton Mill in Lancashire
Camerawork, London: 16 January - 15 February 1978.
Curators: Ed Barber and Jenny Matthews.
A Camerawork touring show. Photographs of people working in the cotton industry in north-east Lancashire.
- St. Mary's Centre, Chester: 20 August - 11 September 1980
- Other venues, including showings on the continent of Europe (no records exist)
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1977
One-Eyed Place
Arndale Centre, Nelson, Lancashire: 2 - 28 October.
Touring show of photographs from Daniel Meadows' period as artist-in-residence in the Borough of Pendle, Lancashire.
- Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford, Lancashire: November
- Impressions Gallery of Photography, York: March 1978
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1975
Living Like This
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London: 8 - 28 October.
Curator: Linda Lloyd Jones.
Exhibition to mark the end of the journey of the Free Photographic Omnibus. Shown to coincide with publication of book Living Like This, Daniel Meadows (Arrow, 1975).
Daniel Meadows: Free Photographic Omnibus
Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Nottingham: February.
A selection from the regional exhibitions of pictures from the Free Photographic Omnibus.
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1974
Daniel Meadows: Free Photographic Omnibus
Impressions Gallery of Photography, York: 1 - 28 September.
Curators Andrew Sproxton and Val Williams.
An Impressions Gallery touring show. Photographs of Yorkshire from the travels of the Bus.
- Half Moon Gallery, London: 14 Feb to 10 March 1975
Daniel Meadows: Free Photographic Omnibus
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford: 21 May - 9 June.
Curator: Nicholas Serota.
Photographs of Yorkshire and the Midlands from the travels of the Free Photographic Omnibus.
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1972
Butlin's by the Sea
Impressions Gallery of Photography, York: 4 November - 24 December.
Curators: Andrew Sproxton and Val Williams.
An Impressions Gallery touring show. Photographs by Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr from a summer spent documenting Butlin's Holiday Camp in Filey, Yorkshire.
- Mid-Pennine Arts, Blackburn, Lancashire: February 1973
Free Photographic Studio
Alexandra Park, Moss Side, Manchester: 29 May.
Photographs from The Shop on Greame Street, Moss Side, exhibited on boards nailed to a tree.
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