Pioneer Daniel Meadows enjoys retrospective in Early Photographic Works at Ffotogallery

Exhibition: Daniel Meadows – Early Photographic Works, Ffotogallery, Penarth, July 14 – September 8 2012

Daniel Meadows studied alongside Martin Parr in the early 1970s, creating pithy, witty snapshots of Britain's social patchwork alongside similarly visionary peers such as Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Peter Fraser. So it’s no surprise to see him defined as a “documentarist” in the build-up to this major retrospective.

It’s his first exhibition in Wales, where he has lived and worked for the past 30 years, including a spell as the figurehead of the BBC’s Capture Wales, a digital project which ran for five years from 2001.

And it looks back through his complex record of urban society, beginning with his first studio, in 1972, when he portrayed local residents while working out of a former barber’s shop in the Moss Side area of Manchester.

Two of his early projects with Martin Parr, Butlins by the Sea, 1972 and June Street, 1973 tell the story of working class households in Salford (the buildings have long since been demolished) and a North Yorkshire holiday camp following the heyday of such resorts.

The most endearing aspects of the exhibition might come in reminders of the Free Photographic Omnibus, a 14-month tour in which he created free portraits for people while circumnavigating England, curiously, in a 25-year-old double-decker bus-turned-darkroom.

A series of two-minute video features, created as “multimedia sonnets” during his digital discoveries with the BBC, also feature alongside an accompanying publication exploring prints, negatives, ephemera and audio recordings from bygone photographic studios, created in collaboration with co-curator Val Williams.

• Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm. Admission free.

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