David Moore’s ‘Pictures from the Real World’ was a forerunner of much that followed in British photographic history, yet the first and only showing of the photographs was in 1988 when they were selected by Martin Parr for an edition of Creative Camera magazine.

The series is a collection of colour documentary photographs of families on a council estate in Moore’s home city of Derby, UK, made between 1987 and 1988. At the time, few documentary photographers were working in colour and Moore’s choice was in many ways a rebellion against the prevalent aesthetic. It was also a crtical response to the political and social realities imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government from 1979. As David Chandler comments in a new essay commissioned for the book; ‘Pictures from the Real World’ presents working class life as a strange blend of physical mayhem and inertia, the abrasive square frames of Moore’s camera cut into bodies and objects, much as the rooms themselves seem to struggle to contain them’.

Published in collaboration with Dewi Lewis Publishing.

David Moore has published several books. His first solo exhibition, ‘The Velvet Arena’, was at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 1994 and was also published as a book. David Moore is currently Course Leader on MA Photography at Central Saint Martins, London. A major survey show of his work is planned for 2015.