In 1973, Daniel Meadows got a UK Arts Council grant of £750. He bought a double-decker bus, converted the top deck into a bedroom, fitted a toilet, kitchen and darkroom and converted the bottom deck into an exhibition space. With all his equipment in place, Meadows hit the road. His goal; to provide a photographic survey of the people of England.

Portraits from the series Photographic Omnibus form the heart of Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s. The directness, open curiosity and charismatic anonymity of the pictures make them a UK antithesis to Richard Avedon's star subjects of the American West.

The bus portraits are relaxed, with a range of smiles that could be lined up in grids and displayed on the walls of Tate Modern. From Southampton, Meadows gives us the Brasher sisters, Lyn's face wreathed in a smile that is game-show-hostess delighted. Resplendent in their Bay City Rollers style tartan jackets, a pair of friends from Barrow-in-Furness have questioning smiles for the cameras, the guy on the left sporting a Manchester United scarf and a haircut from a Farrelly Brothers movie.


It's bad teeth, bad skin, and bad hair, the Big Book of British Smiles come to life on the page, Meadows' unpaid and unsaying sitters ("Running the free portraits sessions was a discipline. It was a Quaker thing....") addressing the camera with curiosity, bemusement and sometimes a disturbing intensity.

As well as the Omnibus pictures, there are also excerpts from Meadows' earlier free studio project from Moss Side, Manchester, some colour shots from his time working at Butlins' Holiday Camp (with Martin Parr) and his later under-appreciated suburban documentation of the conservative 1980s in full flow.

With an accompanying text by Val Williams that details the figures, funding and development of British photography from the early 1970s, Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s is a wonderful book that hits the visual high notes year after year. —Colin Pantall