This month, two new photobooks using very different approaches to create portraits of Britain.

Simon Roberts - Merrie Albion

Brighton photographer Simon Roberts' new book brings together a number of different projects with a common theme. For ten years he has been photographing public gatherings around Britain. Shooting from a high viewpoint he creates peopled landscapes, studies of the vast array of national identities and our communal need to belong.

You can find out more and buy a copy here

Simon Roberts: Download Festival, Donington Park, Castle Donington, Leicestershire, 13 June 2008

Simon Roberts: Annual Eton College Procession of Boats, River Thames, Windsor, Berkshire, 17 June 2016, Merrie Albion – Landscape Studies of a Small Island

Simon Roberts: Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, Shoreham Air Show, West Sussex, 15 September 2007

Merrie Albion – Landscape Studies of a Small Island by Simon Roberts Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2017 Including contributions by AL Kennedy, Alex Vasudevan, Carol Ann Duffy, David Matless, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Ian Jeffrey, Irenosen Okojie, Nikesh Shukla and Tristram Hunt. For over a decade, Simon Roberts has photographed events and places across Britain that have drawn people together in public, communal experiences. This has often been an implicit theme of his work, the apparent desire for common presence and participation and the need to share a sense of belonging, suggesting something distinctive about our national character and identity. Whilst Roberts’s interests have often gravitated towards evolving patterns of leisure, and the consumption and commodification of history, he has also chosen to photograph events and places that have a more immediate, topical significance in the turning of Britain’s recent history, and which – summoning the sense of a national survey – collectively form a visual chronicle of the times in which we live. Merrie Albion ranges across several of his projects from the last decade, projects that have explored not only our leisure landscape but also our social and political landscape. The book registers a distinct shift in approach, and tone, from his work in We English. Roberts has exchanged the element of discovery and revelation evident in his earlier travels through England, for a form of ‘reporting’, in which he responds to subjects and places that are already firmly positioned within the public consciousness – defining locations in our recent national story.

Niall McDiarmid - Town to Town

Scottish photographer Niall's collection of British street portraiture has been amassed over the last seven years in which time he has taken over 2,000 portraits in more than 200 towns. He has a singular knack of matching people with their surroundings creating wonderfully colourful compositions.

His images create a snapshot of the quirks of British society against shop fronts, hoardings, and street advertising, which root his subjects in the context of a particular time.

McDiarmid said, “As a nation we are blessed with a talent for being individuals who are not afraid to stick out from the crowd. It is also a sign of our nation’s tolerance that in most cases, no matter what your age, sex, ethnicity, or social background, you can be as you wish, wear what you like, and walk down any high street without feeling alienated.”

You can find out more and buy a copy here

Niall McDiarmid, “King Street, Kilmarnock, Ayrshire,” 2016.