I rarely read or watch the news anymore. Somewhere along the way the news media lost their integrity and reduced the world to an endless cycle of win-lose conflicts between extremists. When I was a child, newspapers printed one edition a day and there were four news bulletins - morning, lunchtime, early evening and late evening. Time and space were limited, valuable, so editors had to think carefully about which stories to cover. Journalists had to make phone calls, talk to people, write up stories - they had to do journalism.
Now? With 24/7 news channels and newspapers reduced to mere websites with near endless pages, discernment or editorial judgement is no longer required. News organisations could use all that available time and space to dig deeper, to widen their outlook on the world, but that would take time and money. Easier to fill the space with celebrity gossip and the latest X/Twitter spat. That brings in the numbers and numbers bring in advertising and advertising bring in money which ultimately is what it is all about.
The news media inhabit an alternative reality where the 2 percent of Twittering fanatics are representative of the nation, where every social or political issue is reducible to either / or, or them / us. And if at times it seems like our societies have taken leave of their senses then the news media is culpable of driving that process.
All of which is a rather long introduction to a photobook review. The point being that photobooks can tell us a lot more about our societies and their people, and can portray the irreducible complexity of society in a way that the news media are no longer able or willing to do.
In the UK context which I'm most familiar with I think of Mahtab Hussain whose photography project, You Get Me?, documenting the lives of young British Muslim men was published in 2017. Hussain described the series as 'an intimate portrait on negotiating masculinity, self-esteem, social identity, and religion in a multicultural society faced with high unemployment, discrimination in the workplace, and racism'. At the same time, he noted that his subjects 'identify with Britain and they have a strong sense of Britishness'. (In fact, research published in 2014 showed that British citizens of Pakistani origin have a stronger sense of British identity than any other group.)
Then there is Kavi Pujara's This Golden Mile from 2022 documenting the South Asian community in one neighbourhood of Leicester. 'For over fifty years, families around This Golden Mile have had a shared experience of migrating to Leicester and have re-articulated their South Asian identity to exist within an English context,' says Pujara. 'Communities like this are not an erosion of British values or its culture, but a vital artery in our intertwined and tangled colonial histories.'
I also think of The New Londoners (2019) by Chris Steele-Perkins. Steele-Perkins photographed 165 families in London who between them represent more than 200 countries, emphasising again the wonderful complexity of society that defies the reductionist and divisive vision of the news media.
And then there is Niall McDiarmid. Town to Town collects some of the pictures McDiarmid took as part of a project to create a portrait of contemporary Britain. McDiarmid, Scottish but based in London, started out in his adopted city but then started travelling across Britain: 'I’d search for cheap tickets available online and catch a train out of London early every Saturday. Then, because it’s expensive to stay away, I’d come back on a really late-night train crawling into London after a day somewhere up North'. He ended up visiting over 200 towns wandering the streets and approaching random people who caught his eye.
McDiarmid wanted his street portraits to have a distinctive style and he defines that style as focusing on colour, shape and pattern. His use of colour is particularly striking. Not just in the bright, vivid colours of many of his diverse subjects but also in the way McDiarmid photographs them against backgrounds that echo these. This is real Britain beyond the warped world of the news media, and the 120 pages of this book will show you more about Britain than the endless pages of dross that fill the news websites. There is a very generous selection of images from the project on McDiarmid's website.
The book itself is published by RBB Photobooks and the quality of the binding, the paper and the reproductions is excellent. There are no introductory essays, no attempts to shape or steer the viewer's encounter with the image. There isn't even a blurb about the photographer. It's all about the images. Originally published in 2018 it's starting to get a little harder to find now but as of May 2024 it is still available from RRB Photobooks in the UK.
Southwestern is McDiarmid's follow up to Town to Town. While for Town to Town McDiarmid travelled widely across Britain, for Southwestern McDiarmid confined himself to south west London, where he lives, with a collection of images taken over the last decade. As well as the street portraits familiar from Town to Town, Southwestern also has a selection of urban landscape and still life pictures.
The portraits, like those in Town to Town, are very simple and very striking. McDiarmid's subjects always appear to be comfortable in front of the camera - a testimony to McDiarmid's ability to put them at their ease. The landscapes and still life images are of the ordinary and commonplace, but beautifully lit by soft, gentle light, often in muted colours. The overall effect is to turn the mundane and easily overlooked into objects worthy of our time and attention.
This is the best kind of documentary photography that illuminates everyday life and everyday people, where the self-effacing photographer remains in the background, not trying to make himself the focus. As with Town to Town McDiarmid barely appears in the book, other than the front cover and title page (and in his signature since this is a signed edition). He offers no commentary on the images, no explanation of his 'philosophy', and no colleagues tell us what a wonderful photographer he is. (And why would they since it is evident from the pictures?)
McDiarmid's earlier books are mostly out of print and only occasionally available second hand at prices I can't really justify. Since this book was published McDiarmid has published two more - Shore consisting of landscapes, portraits and still life images shot along the Essex Coast, and Breakfast, quite literally a series of pictures of McDiarmid's breakfast table on random mornings over the last four years.
Southwestern is published by Hey Little Heroes which I believe is McDiarmid's own self-publishing venture and came out in 2019. There are 35 pictures in all, and the book is very nicely made with good quality paper and printing and sewn lie-flat binding. McDiarmid's website lists it as out of print, but copies are still available from the Martin Parr Foundation and Setanta Books, both in the UK.
In a recent video interview McDiarmid said that he is taking a break from publishing photobooks, which is a shame, but his website displays a very generous selection of his work. The images from his most recent project, Nightfall, are stunning and I do hope someone somewhere will eventually publish them in a photobook.
This excellent short video shows McDiarmid at work on the streets.
If any of this has piqued your interest in McDiarmid's work here is an hour-long conversation with McDiarmid as he prepared for his Town to Town exhibition at the Martin Parr Foundation.
Niall McDiarmid, Town to Town, RRB Photobooks 2018, ISBN 978-1999727505
Niall McDiarmid, Southwestern, Hey Little Heroes 2019, ISBN 978-0992697020
Thanks Olli - fantastic read and lovely images. Love it when I learn something here on Substack