From the series Close Season.
Unique Vintage Print
Ken Grant's critical photographs document the Liverpudlian economic landscape. He has rarely strayed far from the coast in his work, and has consequently created a specific archive of the economic and social climate of the coastline. His images are a critical fusion between the dark and pessimistic aesthetic of Chris Killip with the cropped and often disorientating points of view used by other photographers of the period such as Anna Fox and Martin Parr. Grant captures mundane moments of social life but includes details such as cheaply branded beer, aging wallpaper and scenes of economically induced boredom to show the contrast of his community's experience of Thatcher's regime to the growing materialism and hyper-real wealth of London. This helps to contextualise the political unrest and social dissatisfaction of the UK as a whole during such a time of cultural transformation.