Now and Then: England 1970-2015

One of the UK’s finest documentary photographers shows off a fascinating range of projects in a newbook, as Geoff Harris discovers

- Daniel Meadows

There has been a glut of great documentary photography books this year and Now and Then by Daniel Meadows is a very worthy addition to the canon. Meadows has been an acclaimed documentary photographer since the 1970s and this fascinating new book covers the full range of his projects. The fact that the book is published by Oxford University’s Bodleian Library (which also holds the Meadows archive) shows the esteem in which he is held by social historians as well his photographic peers. His goal is simple to describe, but encompasses a lifetime: to capture the social and geographic landscape of Great Britain, and how it’s changed over the last 50 years.