http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk/ Ikon gallery, Birmingham.
Visited the Ikon today.
A series of images spanning between 1972-79 all taken in the Midlands, interestingly Myers
was not a photographer when he started his project. I found the exhibition evocative, I grew up in the Midlands, these images brought back so many memories of friends , family , and places, now long gone. For this reason I found
viewing them bittersweet. His portraits of local people, of whom the majority lived within walking distance of his home, are not casual snapshots:he used a large format Gandolfi camera. The subjects themselves are not glamorous "
Myers had identified a major part of the population that went about its business camouflaged in ordinariness and not in the least picturesque" * . Its this "ordinariness" * that make them all the more poignant, they record a social era that is unrecognisable now.
*( pg 9 Paperback, black and white illustrations, 128 pages, W200mm x H245mm. An illustrated catalogue to accompany John Myers exhibition at Ikon. Essays by Paul Lewis, writer and photography specialist and Eugenie Shinkle, photographer writer and senior lecturer in Photographic Theory at the University of Westminster.)
Visited the Ikon today.
A series of images spanning between 1972-79 all taken in the Midlands, interestingly Myers
was not a photographer when he started his project. I found the exhibition evocative, I grew up in the Midlands, these images brought back so many memories of friends , family , and places, now long gone. For this reason I found
viewing them bittersweet. His portraits of local people, of whom the majority lived within walking distance of his home, are not casual snapshots:he used a large format Gandolfi camera. The subjects themselves are not glamorous "
Myers had identified a major part of the population that went about its business camouflaged in ordinariness and not in the least picturesque" * . Its this "ordinariness" * that make them all the more poignant, they record a social era that is unrecognisable now.
*( pg 9 Paperback, black and white illustrations, 128 pages, W200mm x H245mm. An illustrated catalogue to accompany John Myers exhibition at Ikon. Essays by Paul Lewis, writer and photography specialist and Eugenie Shinkle, photographer writer and senior lecturer in Photographic Theory at the University of Westminster.)