The magazine of the photo-essay
Aug 2016 back issue
by Daniel Meadows
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“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
In 1973, when I was twenty-one years old, I set-off on a journey around England in a
double-decker bus. I wanted to make a difference. I'd bought the bus for £360 and
converted it into my home, my gallery and my darkroom. I called it the Free
Photographic Omnibus. I’d done Latin at school and I knew that 'omnibus' meant 'for
all the people'.
Over fourteen months, I covered 10,000 miles and visited twenty-two different towns
and cities, photographing 958 people in free portrait sessions. Parked up in shopping
centres and on high streets I developed and printed the pictures overnight and when,
next day, people returned to see how their photographs had turned out, I gave them
to them for nothing.
JRR 404 had spent most of her working life in Nottingham and, riding in her, I felt a bit
like Robin Hood, redistributing to the people in the form of photographs, the money I'd
wheedled out of my sponsors.
The documentary tradition I belong to holds that each of us is unique, that we cannot
be studied as representative types and that we’re all special. Influenced by sixties
counter-culture, I was mistrustful of big media with its top-down ways. I wanted an
approach that was alternative. So, while shooting their portraits, I asked people to
suggest other subjects for my camera, stories from their neighbourhoods. And these
I photographed too, which is why the edit presented here is a mix of two distinct
photographic styles: medium format portraits and 35mm reportage.
In the 1990s I revisited this project, photographing some of the same people again.
But that's another story...
Living Like This, Around Britain in the Seventies, written and photographed by Daniel
Meadows, the story of the Free Photographic Omnibus (172 pictures, 128 pages),
was published in October 1975 by Arrow books and launched with an exhibition at
the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.
Filey. Boy, Butlin's holiday camp.
Goole Docks. A docker: 'It's not much of a life this, you
know. Up at 5 a.m. to start work at six. Work right
through the day till six p.m. Get drunk, home to bed and
start all over again. You only get time to watch television
once a week — last time I turned it on I noticed the knob
was rusty.'
Conisborough. David Stephenson lives with his father and step-mother on a council estate at Conanby. When he was
fourteen David was playing with a lemon-squeezer in a bus queue; some of the contents of the squeezer sprayed over
an eighteen-year-old sixth former who beat David up. He suffered a fractured skull and a brain haemorrhage and was
confined to hospital for three months. David now works for a coach-builder in Rotherham and manages quite well in
spite of a very pronounced limp.
Burton-on-Trent.
Telford New Town, opening of a new hypermarket. Telford resident: 'The original sign outside Wellington on the
Newport Road said: TELFORD FOR PEOPLE ON THE MOVE. Well they altered it because a lot of people coming into
the houses were stopping here for a few months and then moving on. It now says, THIS IS TELFORD, YOUR
OPPORTUNITY.'
Black-Country, West Midlands. Man with Babycham
advertisement.
Portsmouth. “My name is John Payne and this pigeon is a chequer so I calls it
‘Chequer’. I've got a loft with about sixty in it. Some of them I keeps for show pigeons
and the others I race against me mates what got show pigeons. I goes out catchin'
them. Some I catch I brings home and if they got rings on I breeds 'em. I just keeps
the best ones and lets the others go. I puts corn behind the corner and they flies
behind the corner to eat the corn, I dive round the corner and I've got it in me hand.
Brilliant isn't it?”
Southampton. Lyn and Stella Brasher.
Oxford, The Museum of Modern Art. Viewing the exhibition, Bob Law 10 Black Paintings.
Brighton.
Great Washbourne. Pylon painters. Every twelve years the electricity pylons have a
fresh coat of paint.
Weymouth. Boy with kite.
Weymouth. Sunday evening preacher.
Hartlepool. According to folk-lore the people of Hartlepool
once hanged a monkey. It was during the Napoleonic
wars when everyone was on the lookout for French spies.
One morning a monkey, probably a ship's mascot that had
been washed overboard, was found on the beach,
gibbering in what the locals understood to be French. The
constabulary arrested it and had it tried in court for
espionage. Found guilty it was hanged on the public
gibbet. Today people from Hartlepool are known
derogatorily as 'monkey hangers'.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The afternoon of gas-conversion Sunday.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Workington.
Barrow-in-Furness, strike meeting of shipyard workers.
