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Who's round is it?
Last summer hundreds of the country's postmen and women were armed with disposable cameras and set off on their rounds to record their view of Britain. Photographer Stephen Gill (as featured in Ag42) then took charge of the resulting 20,000 prints and whittled them down to the 240 which feature in this entertaining book. The exercise took the form of a competition to get work published in the book, with revenue from its sale going to the Royal Mail's official charity Help the Hospices. And it clearly drew an enthusiastic response. It is interesting to see what non-photographers choose to photograph: there is the four in the morning start, for one thing, not a time of day familiar to many of us. Then there are the dogs and the improbable letterboxes. Each year, 500 members of Royal Mail staff are injured by animals to the extent they need to take time off work. Most of these incidents involve dogs, but there are geese, cats and seagulls too. The images in the book are arranged roughly chronologically, so the early pages feature darkened sorting offices, young families just awake to say goodbye to Dad (and Mum) before dropping back to sleep, high visibility jackets glowing in the flash light, a sunrise and a fry-up. Some rounds are clearly more picturesque than others, although all variations feature, and among the many dogs we see there are plenty that appear friendly, and plenty that do not. It must have been quite a job for Gill to edit down the pile of prints he was faced with, but he has approached his task with care. The images are thoughtfully juxtaposed and sequenced, and while - as you would expect - the technical quality is variable, the overall effect is entertaining and revealing. Frankly, it is a book that Stephen Gill himself might have produced.
Unseen UK: A book of photographs by the people at Royal Mail, edited by Stephen Gill, published by Royal Mail, hardback £20, ISBN 0-946165-53-X.
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