Daniel Meadows

I  went to a great talk by Daniel Meadows last night which had been kindly organised by London Independent Photography. To my very great shame, I didn't know who he was before I went to the talk. I've only very recently joined London Independent Photography so I was keen to take advantage of their events programme and Daniel's talk sounded really interesting (it's not much of an excuse but it's the best one I've got). It was about five minutes into the talk when he mentioned how he and his college mate Martin Parr had a joint exhibition back in the 70s that the embarrassment first set in as it dawned on me that I really ought to know who he was!

At the age of 20, whilst still a student at Manchester Poly, Daniel hired a shop in Moss Side for eight weeks and took free portraits of the locals. I don't know about anyone else, but as a student at the age of 20 I was struggling to get out of bed in time to hire a video, let alone having the balls and the drive to set up my own studio. Of course that might go some way to explain why he's now a world renowned photographer whereas I'm just an artworker, sitting here blogging about him!

After a summer stint working at Butlins with Martin Parr, Daniel hit upon the great idea of buying an old double decker bus 'The Free Photographic Omnibus' and kitting it out as home, gallery and darkroom all in one. He then drove around the country in 1973 creating a series of portraits of 'ordinary people', based on the premise that there isn't really any such thing as an 'ordinary person' and that everyone has their own fascinating stories. Each night he would print up the portraits he'd shot and give them to the sitters the following day. This resulted in an amazing set of National Portraits that are probably well known to all other fans of photography (apart from fools like myself!). After great success with this project, Daniel then revisited many of the same people in 2001, updating their portraits and catching up with their stories. You can buy the resulting book, The Bus and watch Daniel's short film about it on his site.

In his film, Daniel talks about the problem Documentarists like himself face of being 'Predator or Collaborator' when it comes to their subjects. Increasingly uncomfortable with being in the predator role, Daniel started looking at new methods of collaboration. He hit upon a digital storytelling approach where people would bring in their own photos which are then made into simple films with the subject telling their story in their own words, or 'Multimedia Sonnets' as he elegantly describes them.

Essentially he found a format which enabled the documentarist to remove themselves from the process as much as possible, enabling the subject to tell their own story. To take this process a step further, Daniel then started teaching groups how to run their own digital storytelling workshops. As Creative Director of a seven year BBC Wales project called Capture Wales, he saw this approach rolled out across Wales, resulting in an amazing archive of people's astonishing personal stories.

From listening to his talk it was fascinating to see (with the benefit of hindsight at least) a logical progression from The Bus all the way through to his current digital storytelling. His interests in democratisation of media and giving voice to ordinary people run throughout his body of work from the 70s to his present-day role as Dr Daniel Meadows, Lecturer in Photography and Participatory Media.

I stupidly didn't take any notes, so I've probably muddled things up a bit and I apologise in advance if this is riddled with inaccuracies. Daniel tells his story much better on his own site, along with many examples of digital storytelling. I can't recommend a visit strongly enough and if you ever get the opportunity to hear him talk make sure you don't miss out.