John Myers

The Guide

Book review by David Moore

David Moore discusses John Myers’ documents of domesticity and de-industrialisation in the Midlands region of England whilst considering the value in revisiting an already-familiar view.


In his essay “The Artist as Anthropologist” (1975), Joseph Kosuth asked: ‘why not have the anthropologist […] anthropologize his own society?’ He concluded, some paragraphs later, that the ‘artist – anthropologist’ would make a better job of it, addressing territory familiar to themselves, mapping an ‘internalizing cultural activity in his own society and within his own social matrix’.

John MyersThe Guide arrived, an overview of differing collections of black-and-white photographs from the period 1972–88, published by RRB Photobooks. I am familiar with the territory represented; not only as a photographer but also as a fellow Midlander. Growing up there in the ’70s, I was a contemporary of some of the younger children portrayed. I recognise the patios, the Little Red Riding Hood coats (my sister had one), pet rabbits on suburban lawns and the general décor of the wider environment. Myers lived within this cultural matrix before photography had ever entered his life and because of this, as viewers, we find ourselves already beyond a particular veneer, already within the interior.

Yet, such proximity has to be negotiated. The work’s raison-de-etre is the everyday, and photography’s limitations are such that when we look at what is close to us, we might need reminding of its value. Myers opens up the process through a valuable first-person commentary that echoes the visual work in its deadpan style that helps avoid a simplistic reading of the series as any average survey of English suburbia, contextualising his methods and preventing some photographs from being overlooked, not because the images are badly made or too easily described, but because of their much-discussed banality.

That the pictures are ‘boring’ is continually emphasised, yet one viewer’s ordinary is another’s spectacle. To photograph something is to monumentalise it, allowing the uncanny to emerge. Of Myers’ work in this collection, this is most true of ‘The Bed’ (1976), where the cavernous tones of such a benign object propose latent fearsomeness within the candlewick bedspread that almost fills the frame. I’m reminded here of the surreal experimentation of Bill Brandt’s domestic interiors, but here, there is no such trickery with perspectives, just a fairly straightforward view.

The ‘Furniture Store’ (1974) photographs too are astounding in their revelations. A small series of photographs showing simulacra of family living rooms in shop windows; artlessly arranged and underlit, perform as an abeyance to a petit-bourgeois compliance and “Home in time for tea at 6” that sets the tone for much of Myers’ consumerist backdrop.

These, and the majority of the portraits from The Guide, are complex and understated photographs. Myers makes the point that, throughout the making of these works, whilst influenced by various histories of photography (and presumably a history of art), he was never funded and never intended for the pictures to form ‘a project’. He ‘just took them’, no exhibition in mind, no wanting to please anyone but himself and his sitters, no business plan. His own description of his practice gives the impression that photography is a thing that happened to him, and that the pictures were just there. This is also evidenced in an apparent non-interventionist method of working, as Myers tells us of a subject adjusting his sitting position. “Don’t move”, thought Myers, as though an entire contract would collapse if he actually directed a pose for the camera; all had to occur around him to be valid.

Myers’ photographs resound most impactfully when closer to home and working within familiar territory, and ‘The End of Industry’ (1981–88) series, that sees the book out, feels out of place in this collection, addressing a quite distant socio-political discourse, away from the suburbs. He writes, quite honestly, that he ‘ran out of steam’ and, in contrast to the aforementioned, non-interventionist position, was, at one point, out ‘looking’ for photographs. These images employ similar visual grammar to many of the ‘domestic’ images within The Guide and again are opened up by Myers’ commentary. The photographs of ‘The Female Brickworker’ (1983) particularly articulate this, locating the subject of the picture within an industrial context that, quite feasibly, might exclude her from the relatively affluent environs of Myers’ usual territory. In spite of the eloquent visual record of de-industrialisation during this period of history, one might consider that, within this publication, the idea of ‘old industry’ was a diversion; one with which Myers may not have needed to walk the extra mile, but sit it out at home, to see what happened.

Such inclusions raise questions of the book’s purpose beyond the commodification of a familiar view, particularly where the works have been previously published and are obvious best-sellers. Besides the fast-moving desires of collectors to acquire such objects, this may be understood in a variety of ways. But given the premium prices for his other publications, I was left thinking that this collection’s primary role is in making some of Myers’ work affordable to a larger audience.

As Myers acknowledges his influences, we find familiarity within the photographic precedent, and, as an admirable gesture of transparency by the artist, the roll-call of photographers is welcome. His straightforward list of snappers orientates the viewer towards Myer’s own photographs in a highly specific manner that opens up endless imagining.

As we regard Myers’ photographs in the 21st century, we can understand documentary photography as a particular artifice within the visual overload of the contemporary. The historical period represented here was, in reality, a flammable construct of new social realities in colour, offering entirely different interpretations of social history. Yet, Myers’ was a response that was satisfyingly redolent of the time; a confident interpretation of the histories within his own back yard and a reliable anthropology of the near.♦

All images courtesy the artist and RRB Photobooks © John Myers

David Moore is a photographic artist and the Principal Lecturer for Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at The University of Westminster, London.

Amak Mahmoodian

Zanjir

RRB Photobooks / IC Visual Lab

This book intrigues before you even open its cover. Gazing at both its front and back, Persian miniature painting springs to mind. I learn that the cover image is inspired by Mohammad Juki’s illustration made for Shahnameh (1010), the world’s longest poem written by one single poet. This reference frames the poetic character of the book, in which there is a rhythmical and persistent dialogue between the word and image. The book’s title Zanjir, which in author Amak Mahmoodian’s Persian mother tongue means ‘chain’, alludes to metaphorical links between past and present.

Woven throughout the book are re-presentations of archival portraits taken between 1860 and 1896 sourced from the Golestan Palace Library and Archive in Tehran, Iran, where Mahmoodian undertook an artist residency. Combining this archival material with her own original photography, Mahmoodian generates intriguing relationships between contemporary Iranian culture and its history. For example, four women are in repose in a public park, three are composed for their portrait whilst the fourth turns her back towards the camera – their faces masked by the nineteenth century archival portraits. Observing Mahmoodian’s photographs, Alan Sekula’s 1986 classic writing The Body and the Archive comes to mind, in which Sekula suggests that the territory of information within an archive is revealed by how it is indexed. Through the prism of Mahmoodian’s lens these archival images are re-activated; her sitters perform for the camera, portraits are made and individual identities concealed.

Upon opening this book, the reader enters an imagined conversation between the feminist Persian Princess of the Qajar Dynasty, Taj Saltaneh (1883-1936) and Mahmoodian. Their dialogue continues throughout the book as they lament love, loss and memory. Dividing the book in the middle are a series of elegiac black and red photographs of Mahmoodian’s father on which traces of the poem Shahnameh can be seen tattooed across his body. Through these photographs, Mahmoodian navigates memories of her late father. When photographs cannot convey the depth of emotions captured in them, Mahmoodian’s words offer affective anchorage to the images.

The portrait images are punctuated by the desert landscape, a landscape that holds traces of a human presence yet cannot be geographically located. These photographs are a symbolic reminder that the desert is the only place in which you can see your own shadow. Gazing at these landscapes one’s imagination can breathe. As I reflect on this book I wonder whether it is limiting to refer to it as a photobook, as it calls on both image and text equally to link together lands, cultures, languages and memories. The poetry of words knit together the imagery contained in the book. It is a reflective book that contains a deeply personal narrative which pertains to broader concerns of love, grief and exile, that are tightly held in our hearts. After all, as the Mahmoodian–Saltaneh dialogue suggests: “Isn’t the review of one’s personal history the best undertaking of the world?”

Caroline Molloy

All images courtesy RRB Photobooks / IC Visual Lab. © Amak Mahmoodian

John Myers

The Portraits

RRB Photobooks

Over the course of the medium’s history, many extremely talented photographers’ pursuits have somehow managed to fly under the radar. For every success story, there are countless who, for various reasons known or unknown, are grossly overlooked or underrated. Occasionally a few of those talents resurface, often decades later, for a brief moment of attention. A recent book from RRB Photobooks on the portrait work of British photographer John Myers is one of these rediscovered bodies of work well worth its moment.

Myers’ images arrest us in part because they describe the vibrant 70s in all their kitsch and glory, but for the more patient viewer, those historical markers are simply an entry point leading to the persons photographed. What is remarkable is how often Myers was able to infuse the best of his portraits with a sense of empathetic human-kindness informed by the subtlest of clues, in a similar manner to August Sander or a contemporary like Judith Joy Ross. Myers, within just a year of picking up a camera, becomes adept at the weighty transaction between sitter and photographer to make pictures that speak to both the individual and universal qualities in people. These portraits provide for us meaningful emotional links to strangers in the space of a photograph that transcend distance and time and certainly Donny Osmond posters or antique furnishings. In the best, those set pieces are mere opening acts. Instead we can’t help but to study the faces and postures of Myers’ sitters and see sometimes they can link to something almost primal inside of us – like a fallen child looking to its mother’s expression to know whether to laugh or cry.

A young bricklayer standing in a doorway poses with a smudged face but seems more conscious of his dirty hands; a girl (Louise, 1975) sitting with tucked knee on a two-step ladder, while summoning patience for the camera her slack face seems to be looking past “us” and seeing perhaps how ordinary her life might be; a ballerina (1973) stands before us in black leotard and white knee socks, the projection of confidence coming straight through a tightened jaw and ever so slightly raised chin; a couple (Charles and Pamela, 1973) sit in what looks to be a coatroom – he feels composed of equal amounts of strength and sadness, stooped almost as if he knew straightening his back would put the top of his head out of the frame. He seems to harbour a secret he can’t speak out loud. She sits with an exuberant look smiling widely, eyes bright but seemingly seeing nothing (is she literally blind?), their hands clasped at the centre of an emotional divide. If the photographer wishes us to cry, he has enabled a moment for us to do so.

In a book of 93 photographs, not all are going to strike these qualities but a surprising number do. If one were to find fault with this book it would be with the edit and perhaps a quarter of the images could have been left behind to leave breathing space for the brilliance of the others. With more volumes of Myers work planned, a larger scope of his efforts will enable further exploration and, if as remarkable as demonstrated with this book, will perhaps finally solidify the inclusion of John Myers within the wider conversation of photography.

Jeffrey Ladd

All images courtesy of the artist and RRB Photobooks. © John Myers