Artist Research

John Myers 

John Myers is a British photographer primarily from the midlands, ill be looking at his work called Middle England. Middle England is a photography book containing black and white photos taken in the 70s. Myers deliberately only photographed people and things within a walking distance of his home, hence the name middle England. With him photographing things in such a close location to his own home the photographs become almost a visual documentation of his local daily life. 

I found this book to be completely applicable when looking at my own work, both for layout and content, looking at the ordinary and little bits of life that tend to be overlooked and bringing them to the forefront. I particularly enjoy how he categorised images by subject, and chose to focus on obscure subject matter like substations, televisions and furniture shops. My favourite category  in the book is the boring photos section, this idea about how to take boring photos is a reoccurring theme throughout Myers work. This idea of "boring photos" interests me, the concept sparks many questions, what makes a boring photo? Can a photo truly be boring? Personally I think it would be very difficult to create a truly boring photo, I think of course there can be unskilful photos but to create a photo that failed to interest anyone at all must be extremely difficult, tastes vairy, so boring to one person is exciting to the next. The Images feel both documentary and observational in style, I believe this is because of the clean compositions, I've realised throughout the project that this is the style of photography I particularly enjoy.