John Myers (photographer)


John Myers is a British landscape and portrait photographer and painter. Between 1973 and 1981 he photographed mundane aspects of middle class life in the centre of England—black and white portraits of ordinary people and suburbia within walking distance of his home in Stourbridge.
Myers self-published this photography in books in 1974 and 1990; then only after renewed critical attention in 2011 were more books dedicated solely to his photography published. His work was included in the international survey of photographers, The Photography Book. Since the early 1970s he has exhibited in the UK and Europe. His work is held in the collection of the Library of Birmingham, in the Arts Council Collection, and in the James Hyman Collection.
He later gave up photography for painting and had a solo exhibition in 2003 at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum.
Myers worked as a lecturer in fine art, then painting, from 1969 to 2001.

Life and work

Originally from Bradford, Myers has been based in the Black Country town of Stourbridge, in the West Midlands, since graduating from art school in Newcastle in 1969.
His photographs between 1972 and 1979 were all made within walking distance of his home, mostly of people and places that he knew. His self-published book from this period, Middle England, contains black and white portraits of individuals and families, which were also included in his first major exhibition at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, in 2012. His black and white photographs of "garages, TVs, electricity substations, new builds and his neighbours" in The World is not Beautiful: 1973–1981 were also made within walking distance of his house. He has also extensively photographed British industry.
Myers used a 4×5 large format Gandolfi camera that takes some time to set up and to use. He has noted the influence of photographers August Sander, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, and Diane Arbus.
His photographic archive from 1972 to 1981 is held in the Library of Birmingham's photography collection. The archive contains 134 of his portraits, mainly from 1973 to 1975; and roughly 160 photographs of aspects of the urban environment, from 1974 to 1981.
Although his work is thoroughly English in feel, Myers was a contemporary of, and can be favourably compared to, American Landscape photographers including Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz & Robert Adams |Robert Adam. Closely echoing minimalist sculpture, Myers' imagery pares landscape back to its most minimal, presenting environments, objects and buildings, which marginalise or exclude human presence and offer clear stylistic affinities with the work of Carl Andre Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt. In addition to the photographs' conceptual purity, they also represent a remarkable and nostalgic panorama of Britain in the early 1970s.

In 1976 Myers self-published a book and co-curated an exhibition of photographs by Harold Eugene Edgerton. Edgerton was the inventor of single and multi-flash stroboscopic photography and this was the first solo exhibition in Europe of his work.
Myers gave up photography for painting.
He worked as senior lecturer in fine art at Stourbridge College of Art from 1969 to 1989; then senior lecturer in painting, and head of the MA in painting, at the University of Wolverhampton from 1989 to 2001.

Publications

Publications by Myers

Solo exhibitions

Myers' work is held in the following collections: