Patrick Ward has been a working photographer for some fifty years. His most recently published book, Being English, concentrates on the quirkier side of the national character, celebrating traditions like morris dancing, horse racing, debutante balls, pearly kings and the like. You can see some of the pictures on his website - earlier black and white, and later colour.
The best of his work though, for me, is his fine series Another Britain, the 1960s.
The Another Britain essay comes from early shoots for the Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s and from a major assignment for the Architectural Review in 1969. This magazine asked me to spend six weeks recording the frustrations of daily life in Britain and then published the results as a 70 page special edition....a poignant record of what for many fell far short of being the Swinging Sixties! Also included in this set are grim images from the Gorbals, a slum area of Glasgow now happily no more. These pictures were taken originally for the charity Shelter, which is still doing great work for Britain's poor and homeless.
Pensioners at workingmen's club in Greenock, Scotland.
Men on the dole in Greenock, Scotland.
Salvation Army musicians on Brighton beach.
Elderly lady and her cat in East London.
Miners at Hordern Colliery, County Durham.
Coal miner with his racing pigeons in Hordern, County Durham.
Miners' union meeting in Workington, Cumbria.
Miners in Workington, Cumbria.
In the Gorbals, Glasgow, for Shelter.
In the Gorbals, Glasgow, for Shelter.
In the Gorbals, Glasgow, for Shelter.
In the Gorbals, Glasgow, for Shelter.
[Photos: Patrick Ward]
The miner, photo #8 - that's one hell of a portrait.
Comments