Us and Them England 1981 - 1985

The photographs here are from work I made for two exhibitions in the mid 1980s:

And The North (1983) was an Arts Council of Great Britain commission for a group show curated by Dave Watt of the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal. My contribution was a study of the towns of Spennymoor and Shildon from a social services perspective. Key to my efforts was the enthusiastic co-operation of Durham County Council social worker Bernard Hall (opposite) and his team who gave me unprecedented access to those who were struggling to cope with the fallout of post industrialism.

The other photographers in the show were Paul Graham, Charles Hall, Michael Harper, Nigel Inglis, John Malcolm, Roger Palmer, Martin Parr, Preston Photographic Group, Michael Sedgwick, Bill Stephenson, Janina Struk and Ian Roper.

Suburbia (1987) was my solo show at the Photographers’ Gallery, London. It was the result of a two years study of those who shared, if not always Mrs Thatcher’s politics then at least her aspirational ambitions — working in service industries, championing the family as the bedrock of society, the importance of owning one’s own property and paying one’s own way, advocating self-help — in short the values which defined that decade.

Most of the Suburbia photographs were made in the well-to-do London Borough of Bromley, the very place where Mrs Thatcher had, twenty years previously, raised her own children.