Ron McCormick was commissioned to photograph Southend on Sea in Essex, Cafe Royal Book explain, a seaside holiday resort and the East Londoner’s playground, and also Oldham in Lancashire, an industrial town that rose to prominence in the industrial revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries through mining and the development of the textile manufacture that by the second half of the 19th century, was to make it the preeminent cotton spinning capital of the world.

McCormick, had himself only 18 months previously, completed a post-graduate programme in painting at the Royal Academy Schools where following seven years study in Fine Art he had made a profound shift of direction to working with photography and by 1972 had already exhibited his photographs in London’s Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery and was working as a documentary photographer and photojournalist for several national publications.

First Edition

36 pages
printed in England
staple bound
14cm x 20cm