Daniel Meadows. Free Photographic Omnibus, 50th Anniversary
On 22 September 1973, Daniel Meadows set off on a long-planned adventure in a rickety 1948 double-decker bus that he had repurposed as his home, gallery and darkroom. He was intent on making a portrait of England. He was 21 years old.
Over the next 14 months, travelling alone, Meadows crisscrossed the country covering 10,000 miles. He photographed 958 people, in 22 towns and cities. From circus performers to day trippers. He developed and printed the photographs as he went along, giving them away for free to those who posed for him.
This exhibition will feature dozens of photographs, including loans from The Hyman Collection, as well as previously unseen works of documentary reportage that Meadows made during his travels.
The project was heralded as highly original, a project guided by its subjects as much as the photographer, and an experiment in countercultural values, socialist principals and collaboration, and 50 years later it is just as remarkable.
Daniel Meadows is a documentarist. He has spent a lifetime recording British society, challenging the status quo by working in a collaborative way to capture extraordinary aspects of ordinary life through photography, audio recordings and short movies. His work has been exhibited in the UK and overseas, and he has taught photojournalism across the world. Meadows was awarded a PhD in 2005 and his archive is held in the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford.
