DANIEL MEADOWS And MARTIN PARR June Street, Salford 1973

Description

DANIEL MEADOWS And MARTIN PARR June Street, Salford 1973

DANIEL MEADOWS And MARTIN PARR June Street, Salford 1973 is a Café Royal Books publication.

June Street, Salford 1973 was published in 2022, is 14cm x 20cm and has 36 black and white pages. This is the first edition.

Coronation Street

One day in 1973, acting on a whim, Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr, final year photography students at Manchester Polytechnic, attended a Granada TV open day to view the newly reconstructed set of Coronation Street. There they learned that location filming of the popular soap opera was shortly to end. This was because wholesale regeneration of Salford’s housing stock was sweeping away the ranks of Victorian terraced streets and their paving of stone setts, the very features which defined how a TV audience expected ‘the north’ to look. If the drama were to continue to look like itself, exterior scenes would henceforth be shot only at the studio.

This discovery inspired Meadows and Parr to go looking for a former classic ‘Street’-like location to document before the bulldozers moved in. They settled on June Street in Ordsall, twenty houses which were still fully occupied. Over eight weeks or so, using the college Hasselblad and a bright photoflood lightbulb (screwed into the ceiling socket), they photographed each household — adults, children, dogs, cats, the budgie and, in one case, a tortoise — sitting together in their front rooms. When it was all done, they invited everyone to take part in a group photograph.

On 21 May 1973, BBC Look North broadcast a TV news feature constructed around their photographs incorporating a sound montage in voice-over of June Street residents articulating their anxieties about being relocated. Meadows and Parr were paid £10.

June Street was demolished in 1975. Coronation Street airs three nights a week and is now in its 62nd year.

Daniel Meadows

Café Royal Books

Café Royal Books is an independent publishing house set up by Craig Atkinson in 2005. He is based in Southport, England. CRB release regular publications with the broad subject of British Documentary Photography since 1960. This includes international photographers who work within the British Isles. Alongside photographers from the British Isles who work internationally. There are a few exceptions, with titles that sit alongside this general theme.

This type of work has historically been neglected by both photographers and institutions. Café Royal Books’ aim is to source, gather, and re/present this work as a collective whole. And, thus, giving it a wider audience. CRB publish at least one title every week, presenting, generally, one series by one photographer.

The books combine elements of zines, photobooks, artist books and educational resource. The books are affordable, democratic, utilitarian and useful. They come out regularly and in small editions. So, great to collect.

Have a look at the selection of Café Royal Books we have in stock.