Ffotogallery, the national development agency for photography and lens-based media in Wales, is delighted to announce a major retrospective exhibition by pioneering photographer, documentarian and digital storyteller Daniel Meadows.

Early Photographic Works, a partnership project curated by Professor Val Williams, will also be Meadows’ first exhibition in Wales, where he has lived and worked for 30 years.

In the early 1970s Daniel Meadows embarked on a journey to create a social snapshot of Britain, breaking with photography tradition and infusing the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. His practice developed at Manchester Polythechnic, where he trained alongside fellow photographers Martin Parr, Brian Griffin, Charlie Meecham and Peter Fraser. Together they spearheaded a new British documentary photography movement, operating outside the existing conventions of commercial practitioners and photojournalists.

The exhibition and accompanying publication, funded and supported by a partnership between Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC), Ffotogallery, National Media Museum, Birmingham Central Libraries, University of the Arts London and Photoworks UK, is the product of research by Professor Val Williams as part of an ongoing study into British photography of 1970s and 1980s at the University of the Arts London. Together Val Williams and Daniel Meadows have brought to light the photographer’s incredible archive of prints and negatives, along with ephemera and audio recordings. They have unearthed unpublished and sometimes forgotten treasures which add to a remarkable document - a dramatic, moving and empathetic evocation of a recognisable, yet increasingly alien era.