Liverpool and Merseyside, 1980s: Photographs by Nick Wynne

Documentary photography fixes everyday life in place before it slips out of reach. It gives us a record of how our streets, homes, and habits have changed, and what those changes felt like at ground level.

Community

Nick Wynne’s photographs of Liverpool and Merseyside in the 1980s return to a time before the glare of constant news and media noise. Made with patience and trust, the pictures carry a rare sense of closeness: you feel his rapport with the people he photographs, and the quiet dignity he allows them to keep.

Like Rob Bremner, a fellow student at Wallasey and Newport, Nick’s photographs hold onto the raw charge of everyday life on Merseyside during the Thatcher years, observed at close range and without softening the reality.

"Tom Wood was a massive influence on me. He took me into the library and showed me the works of Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. He talked about the photos and why they worked."

Tom Wood

Nick: “I first became interested in photography at school in the early ’80s. I left school without any qualifications, so I began with a foundation course in art before going on to the photography course at Wallasey. At Wallasey, I was taught by tutors Fred Edwards and Tom Wood. Tom Wood was a massive influence on me. He took me into the library and showed me the work of Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. He talked through the photographs and why they worked. He would also take me around Liverpool while he was making his own pictures, shooting from the top deck of the bus and around the markets. I loved how he would just go up to people and take photographs. That inspired me, and I started doing the same. Tom taught me how to read photographs.”

"During my time at Wallasey, I began a body of work documenting a traveller community in North Wales, as well as everyday life in Liverpool and Merseyside."

Traveller Community

“One of my first projects at college was to document the nearby landscape. While I was photographing in Shotton, North Wales, by the steelworks, a large community of travellers arrived on the site.

The camp was split into two parts: Irish travellers and New Age travellers. They were travelling together, so there was no friction between them. When they first arrived, some of the young Irish kids were throwing stones at me. Ben, in the photograph above, was a little lad who clung to me; I was 17 when I made these pictures. Over time, they all got to know me well. I gained their trust by smoking cannabis with them… once they knew I wasn’t the police or undercover, they were fine with me taking photographs.”

“After Wallasey, I continued my studies at Wolverhampton Poly under Nick Hedges and, finally, in the early ’90s, I went to Newport, which was then headed up by Daniel Meadows.”

Power of The Image

“In recent years, I’ve been working on self-funded projects in Beirut and closer to home, shaped by my own awareness and vulnerabilities within the communities I find myself in. I’m trying to hold on to the urge to record changing times, while facing an increasing dilemma: people are more conscious than ever of the power of images, and more wary of the person behind the camera, and of the reasons those images are being made.”

Published
October 12, 2021