I love John Myers pictures. I'm ashamed to say I only found out about them a couple of years ago via the Grayson Perry curated show Unpopular Culture. I'm not surprised I was late in finding his work. If you look at his exhibition CV it's a bit crap. I don't mean that in a nasty way it's just that he's not had that many shows either here or abroad. The ones he has had have mainly been around his home area of the Midlands. I doubt the London galleries give a shit about pictures of Stourbridge or anywhere else in Middle England, then or now except perhaps when Richard Billingham had his five minutes in the sun back in the 1990's when being pissed and poor in the province's became de rigueur. Not that there are many similarities between Myers pictures and Billingham's. Myers pictures are quiet, they have a hint of New Topographics about them, that show was in 1975. Many of Myers pictures predate them. The picture above of suburban houses pre-dates my Semi-Detached series by thirty plus years! He was lugging a big daft plate camera around the British Midlands long before the legions of beardy Sothists fawning over Sleeping By The Mississippi in the college library were even thought of let alone born.
I'm not the only one to think he has for too long been overlooked and undervalued, here's what Francis Hodgson has to say on the matter. It's true if Myers had of been working in America I would not now be rushing to add his website to my links list before anyone notices it wasn't there. So sorry John.
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