John Myers is not a photographer I had ever heard of and his active period seems to have been quite short in the 70'2 and 80's. He seems to have been 'discovered' quite recently in his early 70's and I think has had two books published recently. The first one cost £75 and sold out, his second which he spoke about in a recent talk I attended costs £150 and of a run of 1,000 it seems 780 were sold in advance. They are beautiful books.
These photographs are what he calls his boring photographs. Almost no people, no drama, flat lighting and perfect composition. All but very few taken within a mile of his some in Stourbridge in the UK which is frankly a post industrial dump. My accountant has offices there and I am always amazed how awful it is.
His style is the total antithesis of some like Steve McCurry and it was Ivo's thread that prompted me to post
Ivo on Steve and John is quite deliberately different. It was a very illuminating and inspiring talk. He was even a little cheeky towards his host Martin Parr remarking that most artists develop a winning formula and then are reluctant to stray too far from that.
Take a look at some of his images
here and go to the boring ones not the portraits (and the televisions and substations). Until the books were published he hadn't even printed some of the negatives simply developed them and assessed the 5x4 negatives and basically thought - job well done.
Nice guy as well.
Mike