While studying in Manchester 1973, Meadows and Parr heard about a street in Salford,Greater Manchester called June Street which was going to be demolished. The two of them began documenting the residents prior to its demolition. Something that attracted the pair to June Street was its use in the filming of ITV's Coronation Street, the street would be alive on tv but was about to be taken from existence. Manchester housing conditions were a big story at the time, with a large article being recently published condemning housing quality in Salford to a 'miserable state'. This resulted in twenty houses in June Street being put up for eminent demolition.
The two paired up with a BBC researcher who recorded the voices of the residents to be used along side their photographs in a story completed by 'Look North' a magazine programme.
Referring back to my comment made upon Paul Grahams work on the importance of choosing the correct location to produce a documentary series on, the support shown to Meadows and Parr for their series highlights how they took something that was relevant to the times and produced photographic work in response. This was then used alongside a larger article on the event and the residents affected.
Meadows images are portrait based, in which he gathered each of the residents within their homes to produce a family photo. It works well in documenting the social conditions of 1973 Manchester because the photographs wern't staged, they were taken within the individuals front rooms while they pose for the camera. Some of the photographs to me feel quite forced and fake because the families look overly happy, but others look natural for how decided the composition of the family is.
This series further highlights the importance of choosing a good location to document. After looking at Daniel Meadows and Paul Graham my initial thoughts to my project are to follow the documentary/ portraiture theme of the subject in their natural surroundings. I now need to come up with ideas of where to photograph.
