The Portraits

Documentary Classics

Introducing British Documentary Classics from RRB Photobooks. This series aims to bring new life to some of the best British documentary photography. Expanding the print legacies of both well-known and previously overlooked photographers, out of print titles will be newly available and accessible to a wider audience. 

Each book in the British Documentary Classics series is reproduced to the same high quality we bring to all RRB publications, reduced in size to fit on the fullest of bookshelves and bound as a lightweight paperback.  

John Myers' The Portraits is the most complete collection of Myer's portraiture work ever published in one volume, and we are excited to be bringing this master of portrait and setting to a wider audience. The collection was shot throughout the 1970's in the West Midlands, his pictures are renowned for having a uniquely British feel to them. 

“Portraiture was the heart of his practice, simple slow portraiture of the  kinds of people who were missed by more generic image making...Had  they been seen in the magazines, these would have had just as much  effect as Arbus. They’re unsettling, discomfiting in a British understated  way.” - Frances Hodgson

“Very important and under appreciated” - Martin Parr

“I know that masterpieces are a thing of the past but I wonder when I  look again at the portrait of the man in the cardigan (Mr. Jackson, 1974):  his pensive look, the cigarette held like that (with a potential for ash on  the carpet), the cardigan and the slippers, all those mesh designs and  the commonplace bits and pieces in the cabinet – and that contained  wood flame in the wood grain – brilliant.” - Ian Jeffrey