Nick Hedges, best known for his powerful campaigning photography of poor housing undertaken for Shelter in the late 1960s and 1970s has died. Born in Bromsgrove in 1943, Hedges was one of the UK’s most compassionate documentarian photographers for almost 50 years, as well as a long-time campaigner for social justice. In the 1970s Hedges worked with organisations such as Half Moon Gallery in London, Newcastle’s Side Gallery, Camerawork and Ten.8 magazines, and from 1980 to 2003 he was head of photography at West Midlands College of Higher Education and the University of Wolverhampton.
Between 1968 and 1972, he worked for Shelter, National Campaign for the Homeless, highlighting the UK’s dire housing crisis, work that was shown at London’s Science Museum and in 2021 was published by Bluecoat Press as Home, alongside another book, Street. His images transformed how the urban poor were visualised in the UK. He also produced series on religious beliefs in Wolverhampton, the fishing industry in Tyneside, factory workers in the West Midlands, rural life in Worcestershire and more.
He received the Royal Photographic Society's Hood medal 'for a body of photographic work produced to promote or raise awareness of an aspect of public benefit or service.' in 2016. His work is in the collections of the National Science and Media Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and is archived at the Library of Birmingham.
Hedges spoke about his work in conversation with Martin Parr at BOP, Bristol, in 2021.
See: nickhedgesphotography.co.uk and thanks to bluecoatpress.co.uk which published two of Hedges's books: Street and Home.
An exhibition of Nick's Shelter work was shown as Make Life Worth Living: Nick Hedges’ Photographs for Shelter, 1968-72 in the Virgin Media Studio at Media Space at the Science Museum from 2014-2015. See: https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/make-life-worth-living-nick-hedges-photographs-for-shelter-1968-72/
Images: top: Nick Hedges and Martin Parr in conversation at BOP 2021; right: Nick Hedges; below: photographers David Hurn (seated left), Daniel Meadows (standing), Nick Hedges and Martin Parr. All © Michael Pritchard.
Comments
Nick Hedges – a memory
My wife met Nick many years ago in Brighton where his then girlfriend Maggie Gathercole - Jill’s cousin was at college – she also became a photographer. They remained in touch and I first met Nick in the mid 2000s when he brought Maggie and her brother who she looked after - up from London - she was by that time stricken with arthritis. Maggie also brought her dog Mr Timmy a hairy Irish terrier who we were to adopt as she was no longer able to care for him. I soon discovered that Nick had done a commission in 1967 for the local Wolverhampton newspaper - Last days of Steam in Wolverhampton – the final months of steam working at Oxley engine shed. He very kindly later sent me a CD of his photographs – some now on my Flickr account. And then in 2012, his book ‘Coal and Steam’ arrived in the post – one section devoted to Oxley and the other to his record of dying coal mining communities. Wonerful and evocative. We have two other books of Nick’s – ‘Painted Ladies’ – ‘…a colourful and fascinating insight into the fashion, culture and interests of the early twentieth century’ based on the coloured postcards of the time; the other is a very personal memoir - ‘mes amis mes amours’ – ‘…recollections of my friends and girl friends.’ What a great photographer and nice man he was…
Nick and I collaborated over the years, but not as often as we would have liked. I used more of his photographs in the first edition of my book Approaching Photography (1982) than anybody else by far.
He spent two years on a photographic fellowship based at Wolverhampton Poly that we (West Midlamds Arts) funded and then ran the photography course at the poly afterwards.. He wanted to show via the fellowship in the late 1970s working people whom he believed were responsible for producing the wealth upon which our society depends with warmth, directness, imagination and humour. About his Shelter work he told me that many of the pictures the 'management' wanted to use fitted into a rather patronising stereotyped image of the 'deprived working class'. Images that, as he put it: "conformed to a vague woolly middle-of-the-road liberalism". His integrity was intense and appreciated by all who worked with him. He brought his students to Derbyshire to do a very successful workshop with John Blakemore and me at The Photographers Place in 1991.