John Myers’ The End of Industry is the third and final volume of Myers’ work to be published by RRB Photobooks, forming a Catalogue Raisonne of his entire photographic output.
These photographs were taken between 1981 and 1988 in ‘The Black Country’ a part of England that was famous for making things from metal.
Changes occurred in the early 1980s that hit metal manufacturing particularly hard. A record number of bankruptcies resulted in high levels of unemployment. Factories either closed completely or realigned their business model to warehousing and retailing components that had been manufactured overseas. Foundries, forges and steelworks - not easily transformed into industrial units or office space - quickly morphed into housing estates, enterprise zones or retail parks.
The change was rapid and irreversible. A landscape that had been formed by the Industrial Revolution disappeared.
The End of Industry is available in a signed and numbered edition of 450 copies. Each book is accompanied by a 5x4” signed and dated silver-gelatin print of ‘Bricks Drying, William Mobberly Brickworks, Kingswinford, 1983’.