Timeless and beautiful, Grafters is a sympathetic tale of industrial post-war Britain. Its subjects are people who endure physical hardship with dignity - miners cramped and soaking against a two-foot coal seam, dockers waiting in gangs for work, shipbuilders unaware that they are labouring on the yard's last vessel, as well as ballet dancers wrought by the sweat and toil of rehearsal. Grafters is an elegiac poem about a time and a way of life that has passed and that we will never experience again.
A study of manual labour and the working class from a bygone era, Grafters shows Jones's best work from the early 1960s and brings to light a photographer who is highly regarded by his peers, but little published.
Arvustused
"A wonderful evocation of ways of life that will never be the same again"Amateur Photography
"An exceptional record of the old industrial world."Independent on Sunday
Introduction Life Coal Ships Docks Play Dance
Colin Jones (b.1936), formerly a dancer with the Royal Ballet, began to take photographs of mining communities while on tour in the north of England. His career as a photographer started at the Observer in the 1960s, during which period he also became known for his portraits of rock icons of the period.
Mark Haworth-Booth is a curator and writer on photography, and is Acting Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. His other books include British Photography (1989) and Photography: An Independent Art (1997)
