No Such Thing as Society: Photography in Britain 1967-1987 (from the Arts Council Collection and the British Council Collection)

Synopsis: -
"The early 1970s saw the emergence of new and independent approaches to documentary photography, which focused on social realism. The leading exponent, Tony Ray-Jones, captured the comedies of social class and the absurdities of human behaviour within the constraints of British culture. By the end of the 1970s, the status of photography within the artistic context had been established. Motifs of intense political dissatisfaction spread across the urban vistas of Ian Dobbie, while Philip Jones-Griffith and Paul Graham employed more conventional forms of photojournalism of urban conflict in the North of Ireland and the streets of South London.The human costs of de-industrialisation and globalisation were the great central themes of the documentary photographers active in the North of England in the late 1970s and 1980s. The social disasters captured in Chris Killip's work extended into the darkly-coloured, claustrophobic interiors of DHSS offices photographed by Paul Graham, and Martin Parr's lividly coloured documents of holiday makers in New Brighton, Liverpool."
CONTENTS: -
"David Alan Mellor: No Such Thing As Society -
- Introduction -
- Photography, Style and Social Meaning in Britain: 1930s-60s -
- A Social Carnival: 1967-75: Tony Ray-Jones, John Benton-Harris and Homer Sykes -
- Portrait and Place: 1973-77: Daniel Meadows, Brian Griffin, Chris Killip, Graham Smith, Ian Berry, David Butterworth, Keith Arnatt and Jürgen Schadeburg -
- Ethnicity, Community and Street: 1972-80: Vanley Burke, Paul Trevor, Tarik Chawdry, Chris Steele-Perkins, Gilles Peress, Philip Jones-Griffiths, Bob Long, Markéta Luskacovâ, Ian Dobbie and Martin Parr -
- Picturing the Civic Crisis: 1976-81: Ian Berry, Martin Parr, Peter Marlow, Christine Voge, Alexis Hunter, Tish Murtha, Derek Boshier, Peter Mitchell, David Chadwick and Victor Bürgin -
- Wastelands: 1976-82: Chris Killip, Graham Smith, Ron McCormick and John Davies -
- Society in Colour: 1984-87: Paul Graham, Martin Parr, Keith Arnatt and Peter Fraser -
- Conclusion: From Document to Art? The 1990s to the Present -
- A Contextual Chronology by David Alan Mellor -.