John Myers’s *Life As It Is* gathers photographs from an archive that remained largely dormant after *The Works* trilogy, shaping them into the impression of a single day in Stourbridge, in England’s West Midlands. Published by RRB Photobooks in 2022, the book includes a substantial body of images that had not previously appeared in print. Rather than treating the archive as a neutral store of documents, Myers reorganises it into a new narrative, allowing separate moments to acquire the rhythm of memory and observation.
The setting is made from ordinary surroundings: houses, buses, removal vans, hairdressers, washing hung outdoors, and ice cream for sale. Yet the book’s interest lies especially in the people encountered within these scenes. Butchers, sales assistants, and dinner ladies appear closely bound to their occupations, while Myers’s framing gives the familiar a slight but persistent strangeness. The photographs register the customs of peaceful middle England without smoothing away their oddness; everyday life is neither romanticised nor dismissed.
Myers has described his practice as following whatever caught his eye rather than pursuing a grand plan. In *Life As It Is*, that instinct becomes an understated form of self-portraiture: the sequence reveals the photographer through the things he selected and the relations he found between them. The book’s narrative construction is distinctive within his work, bringing disparate images into a passage through time while preserving their ambiguity.
For collectors familiar with *The Works*, this volume is significant as an extension rather than a repetition of that achievement. Its unfamiliar photographs broaden the view of Myers’s engagement with post-war British life, while the sequence offers a new account of how his images can operate together. Issued as a 2022 hardcover by RRB Photobooks, *Life As It Is* deserves attention for the clarity of its editorial conception and for the quiet force with which it turns overlooked surroundings into a portrait of a generation.
