Daniel Meadows, photographer and digital storyteller, is a twentieth century pioneer of British documentary practice. His photographs and audio recordings, made for over fifty years, capture uniquely the felt life of the everyday in England. Challenging the status quo he has always worked collaboratively, in a sensitive and gently respectful way.
Fiercely independent from the outset, Meadows contrived his own ways of working: running a free portrait studio in Moss Side (1972), then travelling 10,000 miles in his converted double-decker the Free Photographic Omnibus (1973-74) to make a national portrait, a project he returned to a quarter-of-a-century later. As an early adopter of digital tools he was among the first to combine audio with photographs to make digital stories. Repeatedly he has returned to those he has photographed, listening for how things are and how they’ve changed.
Daniel recently spoke at our Northern Eye Photography Festival on the 50th Aniversary of his Free Photographic Omnibus project.
Inspired by this, we commissioned North Wales based photographer Mark McNulty to work with us to create our new exhibition – A Bay View (now on display at the Coed Pella building). During October half-term we set up a free pop-up studio in the Bayview Shopping Centre and photographed passers-by over a period of four days.
Mark McNulty‘s career as a professional photographer has been wide and varied for over thirty years. For much of his early career he specialised in working in the music industry, touring with bands and shooting gigs and club culture across the uk.
Since those early days he has expanded to cover a diverse and varied range of subjects including lifestyle, portraiture and arts.
Mark recently exhibited 35 Summers at Oriel Colwyn celebrating approximately thirty five years of music photography by Mark and was the first full retrospective of his vast music photography archive.
We photographed 307 people with Mark for our Bay View exhibition and this snapshot is our own archive of people and life in Colwyn Bay in 2023. We hope that in another 50 years’ time it can be looked back on with the same affection as Daniel’s photographs now are, remembering family, faces, friendships, styles and fashions… and that the people we photographed can also then take their own place in history.
We are pleased that Mark will be joining us in discussion with Daniel for the last part of the evening’s talk.
‘Bootboys’: left-to-right, Brian Morgan, Martin Tebay, Paul McMillan, Phil Tickle, Mike Comish, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. November 1974 – From the Free Photographic Omnibus ©Daniel Meadows
From ‘A Bay View’ 2023 © Mark McNulty
TALK PHOTO is a fortnightly evening social event in Oriel Colwyn’s gallery space, where invited speakers are here IN PERSON to share presentations and insights about their work or projects, with a friendly intimate audience.
Talks start at 7pm (doors open 6.30pm) with tickets issued on a first come, first served basis.
If you are in a position to contribute towards the talks then please choose a donation option – this will directly help Oriel Colwyn and the continuation of these events going forward.
If you would prefer not to donate, please choose the FREE Ticket option.
Due to space limitations, we will be capping the audience to 30 people and are happy to offer a FREE option to remove any financial barriers to attend.