Daniel Meadows (born 1952) is an English photographer turned maker of digital stories, and a teacher of photography turned teacher of participatory media.
Life and career as photographer Meadows was born in Great Washbourne, Gloucestershire, "in the middle of nowhere on the edge of the Cotswolds", on 28 January 1952. Both of his parents had Suffolk origins; his father was a land agent for the Dumbleton Estate, in which the family lived; his mother developed multiple sclerosis when Daniel was young and this gradually became more acute. He spent his early years without television.The Bus, 63–67; Meadows' description of Great Washbourne is on p.65.
With Peter Fraser, Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Martin Parr, Meadows studied at Manchester Polytechnic., PARC Projects, Photography and the Archive Research Centre. (Meadows' 1972 series June Street was a collaboration with Parr.Phil Coomes, "Daniel Meadows on digital literacy", BBC News in Pictures, 15 November 2011. Accessed 2 May 2012.) While a student he was particularly inspired by a lecture by Bill Jay (editor of Creative Camera and Album), and an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of work by Bill Brandt.
Meadows was living in the Moss Side area of Manchester during termtime, and was aware of its impending demolition. With its many small shops, Moss Side might, he thought, support a "picture shop", so he rented a barber's on Greame Street from January 1972, inviting people to come into the Free Photographic Shop to have their photographs taken for no charge. Two months later he had run out of money and had to close but had gained useful experience.Daniel Meadows, Living Like This, pp. 9–10.
Inspired by what Bill Jay had said about Benjamin Stone's travel around Britain by horse-drawn caravan, Meadows thought of a mobile version of the Greame Street studio; the Cliff Richard film Summer Holiday suggested a solution. He worked at Butlin's Holiday Camp at Filey during summer 1972 to pay for the publicity materials with which he hoped to get Arts Council and other funding for the purchase and one year's use of a double-decker bus.Meadows, Living Like This, p.12.David Allan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967–87: From the British Council and the Arts Council Collection (London: Hayward, 2007), p.32. He succeeded and for 14 months from September 1973 travelled around England in the Free Photographic Omnibus, a 1947 Leyland PD1 bus whose seats had been removed to make space for a darkroom and living quarters: its windows were used as the gallery.Meadows, Living Like This, pp. 14, 16.The bus survives, in the possession of The Transport Museum, Wythall. In April 2014 it was described as "being renovated and restored" ("Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works ", Royal Photographic Society). The Transport Museum has shown the bus ("From Our Collection: Barton JRR 404", as retrieved by the Wayback Machine on 25 February 2015), describing it as built in 1948. Meadows took this to twenty or more towns. Some of this work was published in Meadows' first book, Living Like This (1975), which combined Meadows' photographs and text with first-person accounts of those he had talked with.
Among the photographs of this series is Portsmouth: John Payne, aged 12, with two friends and his pigeon, Chequer, 26 April 1974.The title has been given in various forms; this is how it appears on the copyright page and p.32 of No Such Thing as Society (2007). Payne, holding his pigeon in the centre of the photograph, told Meadows that he caught and bred pigeons.British Image 1, p.40 (the photograph appears opposite, and is titled John Payne from Portsmouth, aged 12); Living Like This, p.61 (the photograph appears on the same page, and, like many in the book, is not given a title). Paul Cabuts writes that:
The photograph, like many other photographs in the exhibition [No Such Thing as Society], offers a window on a lost world, one that is difficult to perceive without considerable culturally-specific contextualisation. Meadows' photograph is however a masterstroke in providing clues about the life and times of those recorded through his lens. The boys became the subject, although the pigeon had been the vehicle for this particular engagement. In offering up their pigeon (the photograph was taken at their request), we enter a world of friendship and pride, the social activities on a working class housing estate. . . .Paul Cabuts, "Three boys and a pigeon: Photography in Wales", Planet 196. Reproduced here on Cabuts' site. Accessed 3 November 2010.
With its echo of Ken Loach's film Kes, the photograph was widely reproduced.David Alan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society, p.32. It was the cover photograph of the 1975 Arts Council anthology British Image 1 and the photograph on the poster for and catalogue of the 2008 travelling Hayward exhibition No Such Thing as Society.
In 1979 Meadows presented an episode of the Granada TV arts series Celebration that focussed on photographers Charlie Meecham and Chris Killip. Meadows went on to photograph the northwest of England in the 1970s, including the people around Factory Records, and in the 1980s he went on to study the residents of a middle-class London suburb (Bromley,Val Williams, Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s (Brighton: Photoworks, 2011), 220, 221, 224. although not specified at the time), the latter published as Nattering in Paradise.
Career as teacher and digital storyteller Meadows became interested in teaching while photographing in Lancashire in the 1970s; in 1983 David Hurn invited him to help teach the Documentary Photography course at Newport College of Art and Design. From 1994 he has taught at Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.David Alan Mellor, No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967–1987: From the British Council and the Arts Council Collection (London: Hayward Publishing, 2007), 217. His students there have included Tim Hetherington.Tim Hetherington, "The Big Issue", Source. Accessed 1 November 2010. In the 1990s, he led photojournalism workshops for the Reuters Foundation, the British Council, and other organisations in Europe and the Indian subcontinent.Potted biography, "Artists ", Projections of Reality. Accessed 1 November 2010.
Meadows' interest in participatory media was greatly influenced by Ivan Illich's ideas as presented in Tools for Conviviality; and his interest in digital storytelling influenced by, successively, Pedro Meyer's I Photograph to Remember, Meyer's ZoneZero website, and the NextExit website of Dana Atchley of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) at UCB. Meadows taught an undergraduate course titled "Digital Storytelling and Photography" and also contemplated ways of adding digital storytelling to the website he was building about the Free Photographic Omnibus and the later lives of the people this had depicted. Meadows corresponded with Dana Atchley and arranged to attend one of the "boot camps" held by Atchley, Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen. Atchley was too ill to appear, but at the camp and a subsequent event at Ben Lomond he learned and exchanged ideas.Daniel Meadows, "The Electric Engagement", pp. 94–96 within Daniel Meadows and Jenny Kidd, "Capture Wales: The BBC Digital Storytelling Project"; in John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam, eds, Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2009; ), pp. 91–117.Therese Nolan-Brown, (PDF), Queensland University of Technology, 10 May 2008.
From 2001 to 2006 Meadows was creative director of Capture Wales, a BBC Wales project: "[he] accomplished an innovative reworking of the Californian [CDS] model, adapting it to the 'media ecology' of UK public broadcasting".John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam, "Computational Power Meets Human Contact", in Hartley and McWilliam, eds, Story Circle: Digital Storytelling around the World, p.6.
Since this time Meadows has also lectured widely about digital storytelling.
Photographic archive In August 2014, Meadows' photographic archive was described as being in the process of acquisition by the Library of Birmingham: "Meadows established a relationship with a collecting institution with specialist expertise and resources","Daniel Meadows: Key points from the case study", Photographers' Archives and Legacy Project. Accessed 7 October 2019. receiving much help from Pete James, the library's Curator of Photography Collections, and Val Williams.Daniel Meadows, "The Archive", Photobus. Accessed 7 October 2019.Diane Smyth, "Obituary: Pete James, Curator of Photography Collections at the Library of Birmingham, 1958–2018", British Journal of Photography, 14 March 2018. Accessed 7 October 2019. With a drastic cut of funds to the Library of Birmingham, its ability to continue to archive the work seemed doubtful.In a note within his page "The Archive", Meadows points the reader to a December 2014 article by Francis Hodgson, "Another one bites the dust", which describes the importance to British photographic history of the Library and the gravity of the Library's situation.
The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford acquired the archive in March 2018.Michael Pritchard, "The Daniel Meadows Archive: An update", British Photo History, 2 February 2019. Accessed 7 October 2019. In autumn 2019, the Bodleian celebrated the acquisition with an exhibition of Meadows' work, Now and Then, accompanied by a book."Britain then and now captured in unique exhibition by pioneering documentary photographer Daniel Meadows", Bodleian Libraries, 10 September 2019. Accessed 4 October 2019.
Selected exhibitions
Solo exhibitions "The Free Photographic Omnibus." Museum of Modern Art Oxford, 1974.Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240, 241. "Living Like This." Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), 1975. To coincide with publication of Meadows' book Living Like This.Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240, 243. "Shuttles, Steam and Soot: A Cotton Mill in Lancashire." Half Moon Gallery (London), 1978. "Daniel Meadows." Uppermill Photographic Gallery (Oldham), 1981.Williams, Daniel Meadows, 240. "Suburbia." The Photographers' Gallery (London), 1987.Invitation card from the Photographers' Gallery for a private viewing of "Suburbia", "The World Over" (George Rodger) and "Incurably Romantic" (Bernard Stehle). "National Portraits: Photographs from the 1970s." Viewpoint Photography Gallery (Salford); Montage Gallery (Derby), 1997.Val Williams, ed., National Portraits: Photographs from the 1970s (Salford: Viewpoint Photography Gallery; Derby: Montage Gallery, 1997). "National Portraits: Now and Then." Irish Gallery of Photography (Dublin), 2000.List of past exhibitions, Irish Gallery of Photography. Accessed 30 October 2010 "Now and Then." Photofusion Gallery (Brixton, London), 2001.Robert Murphy, "Going back to the Future", Evening Standard, 18 May 2001. Accessed 6 June 2014. "Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works." National Science and Media Museum (Bradford), 2011–2012;Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works, National Science and Media Museum. Accessed 4 May 2020.Liz Jobey, , Financial Times, 2 September 2011.Exhibition notice, Redeye. Accessed 29 April 2012. Ffotogallery (Penarth), 2012;Exhibition notice , Ffotogallery. Accessed 6 June 2014.Ben Miller, "Pioneer Daniel Meadows enjoys retrospective in Early Photographic Works at Ffotogallery", culture24.org, 11 July 2012. Accessed 6 June 2014. the Gallery, Library of Birmingham, 2014;"Daniel Meadows: Early Photographic Works ", Library of Birmingham. Accessed 2014-06-06. London College of Communication (London), 2015.