Daniel Meadows (b.1952) is a British photographer, photography and digital media teacher. He studied at Manchester Polytechnic in the 1970s alongside other notable British documentary photographers including Brian Griffin and Martin Parr.

In the Spring of 1972, Meadows rented a disused barber’s shop on Greame Street in Moss Side, Manchester and opened a free photographic studio. Although he had to close it after two months, due to lack of funds, Meadows would use the experience to develop one of his future projects.

After The Shop on Greame Street, Meadows produced two series with Martin Parr, Butlins by the Sea in 1972 and June Street, in 1973, a record of the families living in June Street in Salford whose house were about to be demolished.

Following on from his Greame Street free photographic studio, in 1973 Meadows applied for and received an Arts Council grant with which he purchased a double-decker bus which he converted into a mobile, free photographic studio. For fourteen months from September 1973, Meadows drove around England taking pictures of people and giving them free prints. In total he visited 22 towns and cities and photographed 958 people.

In 1981 started teaching at Humberside College of Higher Education before moving to Wales in 1983 to teach at Newport School of Art and Design and then in 1994 to Cardiff University. Meadows retired from teaching in 2012.

I think what appeals to me about Meadows pictures, and what I perceive to be the difference between him and his contemporary, Martin Parr; is that Meadows engages with his subjects whereas Parr seems to observe his. Meadows images have a warmth and generosity about them, something that was demonstrated by Meadows as he gave the subjects of his images free prints, whereas Parr’s can sometimes be viewed as slightly mocking his subjects.

Sources

Meadows, D., n.d. Photobus ~ Daniel Meadows. [online] Photobus.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.photobus.co.uk/daniel-meadows&gt; [Accessed 30 March 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. n.d. Daniel Meadows. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Meadows&gt; [Accessed 30 March 2020].

O’Hagan, S., 2015. Daniel Meadows: The Photographer Who Championed ‘The Great Ordinary’. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/25/daniel-meadows-photography-society-ordinary-butlins&gt; [Accessed 30 March 2020].